


Pale Imitations

by Yasminke



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen, Violence, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-05-28
Updated: 2004-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:37:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yasminke/pseuds/Yasminke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Season 5 -- up to "Harm's Way")<br/>A future reunion to solve a spate of murders</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The tall, slender figure stood at the large window, staring unseeingly across the fields that led to the River Cherwell. Oranges and pinks peeked through heavy, winter clouds into small, diamond-shaped panes and stretched his shadow over the antique Persian carpet and onto the heavy oak desk. The sentinel knew tawny cows with large, moist black noses and soft, sad brown eyes grazed in those fields, oblivious to the storms brewing both on the horizon and in the sprawling, Edwardian estate.

“I’d like to peruse the last incidents again,” he said. “Let’s concentrate on the Asian ones, if you’d please, Miss Penthorpe.”

The young woman, newly graduated from Corpus Christi College with a degree in Classics, shifted in the brown leather chair. This would make the third time he’d asked her to summarize records from the last two years. For reasons known only to him, a group of Watchers had been sent out to verify reports from the field. Her brother, due to be wed on Sunday at historic Rose Hill in Iffley, had spent weeks interviewing police and pathologists in Southern Europe. Her own fiancé, James, had just returned from Ireland and Wales. Together, they had presented to the Council the forensic reports, complete with graphic holograms in a PowerPoint presentation. Not that they hadn’t known that there were vampires loose, even in the Cotswolds, and that Slayers and their Watchers had short life expectancies, but the vampires had tried to keep low profiles under the ruthless, unforgiving administration of the Reorganized Watchers’ Council’s newest Director. She glanced at her watch; she’d have to leave early or she’d miss the rehearsal.

“Katherine,” her boss said softly, never turning from the window. “I know you’d rather be elsewhere, but I need you focussed. At least for the moment.”

“Yes, sir,” she responded. Her mind still miles away, she began the recitation, rarely needing to look at the notes before her, except for the Chinese Slayer’s name, which she was sure she mangled every time.

An hour later, the Director finally moved from his sentry and with a “give my regards to your parents, and best wishes to your brother,” concluded their meeting. Katherine left hurriedly, running to meet James in the grand foyer in order to leave before the weekend rush hour turned the A40 into a car park.

Easing himself into his red leather chair, Wesley took a deep breath and dialled the internal numbers. He asked his personal secretary for a pot of Oolong tea, requested that all files related to the cases under scrutiny be uploaded to his computers in the office and at home, then arranged for a driver to take him to his Summertown home at seven pm, in time for his dinner engagement. While he waited for the tea and data, he massaged his forehead to stave off the blossoming headache.

Within moments, he smelled the arrival of Mrs. Constantine, the secretary he’d inherited from the previous Director. He moved back, giving her room to place the pot and cup on the desk.

“Your files’ve been uploaded and since there’s nothing much else I can do to help, I’ll be off for the weekend.”

She set the pot and cup in the customary spot then tut-tutted as she did whenever she felt he was working too hard.

“There’re some digestives, too. Make sure to eat them,” she admonished. “Dinner won’t be served ‘til well after eight. And you wouldn’t want to tend to **that** with a roaring headache.”

He nodded; with that tone of voice, he knew, a verbal response was neither needed nor would it be heeded. Ever since his readmission and rapid, controversial rise through the Council ranks eight years ago, she had transferred her dormant nurturing skills (her only son had been killed in the explosion of 2002) onto him. This despite his half-hearted insistence she stop. Savouring the tea she’d poured, Wesley leaned back in the chair.

“Open folder ‘2013’. Open ‘United Ireland,’” he commanded. “Read file 11-1o-13-O’Leary, case summary.”

“Report summary last up-dated, 21 October, 2014 by James Sutton,“ the computer voice enunciated in a soft, female drawl Wesley had specially programmed into his office computer. “On 11 October, 2013, Patrick O’Leary was found murdered in front of the Oriental Institute, off St. John Street in Oxford, England. Forensics determined cause of death to be severe blood loss. Puncture holes may have been present on the victim’s neck in the general vicinity of the jugular vein, but trauma to the neck was so severe, a more definitive analysis impossible. A native of the city of Galway, Ireland, Patrick O’Leary’s occupation was listed officially as an importer, but was a retired member of the Watcher’s Council, having left active service in 2011. He left behind a wife, daughter and one grandson. Parenthetical insert by JS—said family members were found murdered on 14 October 2013. End insert. The eldest—“

“I knew I’d find you here,” a husky soprano, with the faintest hint of a Slavic accent, called out from the door.

“I promised I’d make it in time, Nadya,” Wesley said. “Pause, computer. I even requested a driver, and ordered him to tear me from my desk by brute force.”

“Yes, I saw Mrs. Constantine on her way out,” she said, and walked around behind the desk to sit on the corner. “But we all know that you haven’t left the office before eleven for six months. So, what insights to these cases do you think you can find that Magillicutty’s people haven’t already investigated?”

Wesley shrugged. “Something’s niggling. I know that if I review them enough, I’ll discern what.”

“Oh, fine, be that way. You have thirty minutes until your car arrives. Don’t forget that this is important enough a dinner for Rupert Giles to drag himself up from Bath and for Nikolai and Alexis to come from school.”

“Yes, I realize the importance of shnorring money from the still landed gentry of the Council.”

“Shnorring?”

“Begging.”

“Ah, yes, well, _Boyar_ Director, the RWC is perpetually strapped for funds, especially my department, by the way. Now, what particular case are you reviewing?”

Wesley sighed, ran his fingers through his greying hair but didn’t answer.

“Let me guess, then, shall I?” Nadya left the desk to sit in the brown chair Katherine Penthorpe had occupied earlier. “I will use my psychic powers and say ’Patrick O’Leary’?” At Wesley’s quick flick of an eyebrow, she grunted. “You are not responsible for the deaths of Watchers, neither those currently employed nor those retired, even those who were involved in errands for you at the time of their demise. And obsessing with these deaths is not healthy.”

“Would you, of all people, rather I ignore my intuition?”

“No, of course not, but how do you know they’re linked? What do all these cases have in common? Besides occupation?”

“I don’t know that they **are** related. It’s just a feeling, and without going into the field to inspect the corpses for myself, I cannot be certain.”

“Fieldwork is an impossibility for you.”

“Yes, I know.” Wesley rubbed his eyes, which were becoming the locus of his headache. “I realized that a while ago. That was not, however, my point.”

“Good,” Nadya said and reworked tendrils of her dark brown hair back into a bun. “What angles have you investigated? How narrow is your field of inquiry?”

“It’s not. I’ve cases from Ireland to China. In Rome, Prague, London, Shanghai, Oxford. All I can tell you is that the murderers are vampires, rather ruthless ones, who emerged approximately two years ago and are targeting Slayers and Watchers.”

“Have you contacted anyone?” she asked, trying to hide the pleading in her voice.

“I’ve not contacted anyone outside the RWC, no.”

Disappointed, she returned to the investigation at hand. “Is it a cult? Like Aurelis?”

“As Rick’s department informs me, there are no signs of cultic activity.”

“Okay, how are your files divided, then?”

“Geographically. As lodged from the field.”

She heard the melancholy longing to be away from his desk. “Have you looked at them chronologically?”

“Yes, of course, but there are murders whose dates coincide.”

“That could be sheer chance. Perhaps there are other links. Go through them again, systematically, but without relying on the computer. Use your hunches; they’ve served you well before. Who was the first victim, Wesley?”

“Virginia Raleigh. Killed in Plymouth, mid-September 2013.”

“Next?”

“David O’Leary and Joshua Goldstein, end of the same month.”

“Next?”

“Geoffrey Dunlain, in the tube at Euston. A week later.”

“He was Goldstein’s partner, by the way. A double blow to the Goldsteins. They were very fond of—” Nadya took in the crease between his brow and the narrowed eyes. “Yes?”

“Then Patrick O’Leary, and maybe his family. After that— The rumours are starting again; I have to stop this before there’s panic.” Wesley pinched the bridge of his nose and heard the scrape of the chair as Nadya rose.

“I can see you’re deep into this, and determined to go it alone,” she said. “Arrange them, realign them according to M.O.s, arrangement of corpses, whatnots. Your driver will be here shortly. If you are late, I shall see to it that someone relate your most embarrassing moment in front of the children.”

Wesley grinned. “How ever would said person choose just one?”

He waited until her soft chuckle faded with the click of the door’s latch. Remaining at the desk, he did as she suggested: according to dates, locations, separating those whose bodies had been mutilated, rearranging the lists again. His mind so preoccupied, he started when the knock came.

“It’s Wadsworth, sir.”

“Come in, William,” Wesley said, while he entered the code to secure his computer and began to tidy his desk.

The chauffeur crossed the threshold and watched silently until Wesley asked, “Will Mrs. Constantine cluck when she comes in tomorrow, do you think?”

“She does run a tight ship, sir,” chuckled William. “Puts the fear of many a deity in anyone who tries to see you without an appointment.”

“Do tell. Oh, and I hear from Mrs. Romanescu you’ve a book on sale in Blackwell’s?”

William held the door open, willing Wesley toward it. “Yes, sir,” he said from the other side. “I sold my poetry to an independent publisher in Jericho. Some of it’s bloody awful, but they seemed pleased.” The driver returned Wesley’s bewildered expression.

“Sir?”

“I have the most frightening sensation I’m late.”

“Not at all, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. If you’d actually leave the office now, you’d be right on the mark.”

 

~*~

 

Wesley bolted out of a deep sleep, gasping for air. His heart was banging against his ribcage, threatening to break through its confines. He floundered in that space between sleep and wakefulness, trying to remind himself it was just a dream, and as simply a Watcher, he had no need to believe his dreams were prophetic. Yet, in the dream which lingered tenaciously in his mind, the RWC building had been become a cricket oval, his office the pitch. A teenaged Faith had bowled to him—blood red names, dates and places scribbled on black cricket balls—all of which he was unable to hit. From the stands, dead Watchers, colleagues and friends, had risen from their eternal repose to taunt his lack of agility. In the end, the referee, his father, had called him out and driven him from the pitch in disgrace.

The sense of imminent failure still hovering over him, he rose from bed and went into the en suite to splash cold water onto his face. One simple task accomplished, he stood over the basin and took deep measured breaths, determined to calm his racing heart.

“Was it the salmon mousse?” Nadya asked. Yawning, she put her shoulder and head against the doorframe to keep her upright.

Wesley shook his head and tried to smile. “I never have salmon mousse.”

“Perhaps it was the scintillating conversation Friday night?”

“I secured funding for the preparatory school, the training camps **and** your department.”

“Ah, then, the tone of voice when Alexis cursed you because she couldn’t go back to Bath with Rupert.”

“Had it happened a few years ago, perhaps,” he answered with a forced chuckle. “However, I’ve learned to steel myself against teenage tantrums. Instead, I persuaded her to use it for her language assessment.”

Nadya frowned at the fatigue in his voice. She’d seen how he’d tried to put his own concerns aside during Friday’s dinner in order to quiet the rumourmongers and steer conversations toward the future. On Saturday, it had been his idea to go punting and train with Nikolai and Alexis on the banks of the river. Now, the strain of keeping up pretences had worn him down.

“Still looking for the link that binds them all? Is that what caused you to toss all night and then break out in a cold sweat?”

 “Mmm,” he answered, joining her at the doorway and kissed her forehead. “I’ve arranged them according to date of discovery, official date of death, geography.”

She took his hands in hers and guided him back to bed. “Maybe a new perspective? What other clues are there? Expertise, perhaps? He killed only two full Slayers; the others were in training.”

He pulled the goose down duvet over the both of them. “There has to be a pattern to this and even the computer can’t figure it out.”

“ _Bozhe moi_! I told you to use your biological computer.”

“I wanted points of congruence, love.”

“And?”

“Most were tenuous at best. But there was one: they were all under the aegis of the RWC.”

“Simultaneous translation: ‘they were all under the protection of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce,’ but that’s ridiculous and counter-productive.” Nadya rolled onto her side, to face him in the dark. “I’m wide awake now, and not interested in sex, so list more similarities or possibilities. Or maybe take a different tact.”

“Such as?”

“Were the Watchers trained at the same time? Do they support the same football team? Same ethnic group? Class? You English do love your class system. Maybe someone idolized Jack the Ripper or watched too many Tarantino films as a child? Did you ask someone their opinion?“

Wesley laughed. “Dear God, don’t you give up? Don’t think I didn’t notice what you’ve been ever so subtly suggesting.”

“The question is: are you yielding to my powers?”

 “Yes, I'll yield. You’ve no idea what you’re in for.” He flung the duvet to the side and fumbled on the nightstand for the cordless phone. “Where’s the phone gone now?”

Smirking in victory, Nadya replied at a measured tempo, “You’ve time. It’s now just seven pm there.” She turned on the light, grabbed the extension (which was exactly where Wesley had put it) and sat on the edge of the bed. Searching through the stored phone numbers, she found which she wanted and hit the dial button.

 

~*~

 

Travelling had always beckoned him, ever since childhood, but now that he had seen the world, he’d longed to return to finish what he’d started, to complete the circle.

And so he came back, to the “City of Dreaming Spires”, and the seat of that abyss called the Reorganized Watchers’ Council.

The final leg of the journey had begun in the Basque region of Spain, where he tracked down Esperanza Solando, a Watcher who was the expert in vampire psychology, but had no field experience. Her thesis on the psychosis that overtook vampires on their emergence from the grave had been an invaluable resource. He had spent weeks in Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room, memorising her descriptions of the stages from newly created demon to cognizant vampire.

Her work had become his bible, his guide to eternal life. And soon, when he achieved universal recognition, he would write reality as she, the woman who had turned him—not that repugnant bookworm—taught him. **She** had taught him to acknowledge and conquer the initial disorientation, to use the rush of predation to his benefit, to prolong the kill and enjoy the satiation of a feed. A reality blossoming and luminous, not the dry, lacklustre fallacy Solando had written.

There were so many other things she had taught him as well, things he’d not include in his tome: the raw sexuality of vampiric existence, the power that courses through immortal veins, the joy that came from seeing the fear in his victims’ eyes, the songs of the stars and the moon.

But then, as suddenly as she had answered his summons, she had grown bored. “Been here, done this,” she’d complained, and with a swish of skirts, the woman with long ebony hair and soft porcelain skin left him standing at the train station in Prague.

“She’ll return,” he frequently convinces himself aloud, almost a litany. Not that he’s lost without her. Hardly. Her tendency to descend into bouts of madness had almost driven him over the brink. But one day—very soon—she’ll hear of his exploits, and she’ll come back to him, begging him to take her into his arms once again.

A small, pathetic whimper from his left snapped the vampire from his revelry.

In the darkened house on Tyndale Road, a woman, her mouth covered with duct tape, fidgeted. Molecules of dust reflected in the glare of the halogen spotlights directed at the pseudo-impressionist painting above her head.

He’d killed the husband, a simple lecturer at Merton College, on Saturday night, shortly after their return from one of those Indian restaurants that dot Cowley Street. He’d smelled the lamb vindaloo on the man’s breath; a scent so strong, he was sure he would taste it in his blood.

He’d left the wife alone for a while. But just for a little while. At first he wondered if she remembered how she had shunned him in their sophomore year at university. She, with her shoulder-length, corn silk hair and bright blue eyes, had shunned **him** for some mediocre postgrad in modern economic theory. He had the bright future, the old money, he’d wanted to scream at her: enough money to cherish her for a lifetime. Instead, she chose a working class academic who bought her a cheap semi-detached next to an evangelical church and a bunch of smelly, stinky curry houses.

He reached over to grab a fistful of that corn silk hair and twist it painfully. Her eyes widened more than he thought possible and tiny whimpers erupted from behind the strip of grey as he lifted her up to join him on the settee.

“Do you remember me?” he asked and watched as her head bobbed.

“Splendid,” he hissed. “Then you’ll remember how shabbily you treated me when all I wanted was to treat you like royalty. But you stepped over me, regarded me with disdain. You and your husband, “ his head jerked toward the rotting corpse under the bay window. “I rose above you, above all of you. You’ll all pay the price.”

He ripped the front of her dress, popping the pearl buttons off her Laura Ashley dress and caressed her neck.

“You don’t really remember me, do you?” he cooed.

She bobbed her head frantically.

“Prove it, then. Tell me, what was my name?”

He sneered when she nodded acquiescence, then yanked the tape.

She stared into his face when his features morphed; fear paralyzed her and refused her the power to grant him his request.

“Stupid bitch,” he snarled. “Tell me!”

“David,” she whispered. “David O’Leary.”

 

~*~

 

Wesley steepled his fingers in front of his face, tapped his lips as he mentally reordered his list of things to do. “Could you read that back to me, please, Mrs. Constantine?”

“Put a modicum of humour and warmth into the perfunctory thank-you letters which you dictated early Saturday morning; follow-up yesterday’s phone call lock-down of the Hampshire Preparatory campus with official emails; send bouquets of flowers and HMV certificates for birthdays in the Council this week; confirm the promotions of Junior Watchers listed this month; sneak up and spy on the latest group of trainee Slayers—“

“I don’t recall putting it quite that way.”

“I shall be as discreet as any white-haired biddy.”

“Hmmm,” he replied. “I’m sure they don’t refer to you as a ‘biddy’.”

“Actually, they do. Will there be anything else this afternoon?”

Wesley scooted away from his desk and went to the window to absorb the hushed sounds of the English sunset. Although it had taken him a while get used to what Californians called “winter,” darkness at four pm had bothered him ever since he learned what lurked beyond his bedroom. Too much time to prey.

“Mrs. Constantine, if you’d rather leave—“

“I clock out when you no longer need my services, whatever services someone my age can grant.”

Wesley tallied that response on his “predictable board”. “In that case, I’ll trouble you for a late afternoon tea. Would you also be so kind as to invite Mrs. Romanescu to join us at six o’clock?”

“Of course. The children went back to Hampshire?”

“To everyone’s great relief, yes. The noise level has returned to near-sanity.”

“Children will be children, one shouldn’t stifle their nature.” She watched him struggle with the idea, then added, “However, given your father—“

“Is there anything you don’t know, Mrs. Constantine?” Wesley asked as he drew the maroon, sun-blocked curtains closed.

“Secretaries are an undervalued source of knowledge and insight. I’ll go arrange for crumpets and blood.”

 

~*~

 

“Home, sweet, home.” Spike glanced back at Angel, who stood giving the ivy-covered, grey building, three above ground floors of demon-hating Watchers the once over. “Well, home for some of us, at any rate.”

Angel strode past him, through the front doors and into the foyer. Staircases started on either side of the lobby, curving around into a heart shape on the first floor, then branching off like arteries leading to the offices. Portraits and tapestries, both antique and modern, dotted the walls above highly polished hardwood floors. Queen Anne chairs, upholstered in crimson and gold to match the heavy velvet draperies gave the appearance of a waiting area. No receptionist, no signs: anyone with business here knew exactly who worked in the building and where to find them. However, for the lobby of the headquarters of an international organization, it was empty and lifeless. Lifeless, except for faint echoes from distant offices.

“Looks like they keep bankers’ hours,” Spike said. “Not modern like Wolfram and Hart, but heating bill must be enormous. Wonderin’ where Head Boy is, eh?”

“Exactly,” Angel replied. “I don’t feel like conducting a room to room search.”

Spike shrugged. “Maybe he’s out hunting vampires? Longer hours this far north and with it being winter and all.”

A woman, clearly in her sixties, her age given away by blindingly (and natural) white hair and a stern matronly expression creased with worry lines, approached from the darkened, western hallway of the ground floor. Her pumps pounded when she stepped, sounding more like an officer on parade than a woman nearing retirement. When she entered the lobby, she pulled an earpiece from behind her right ear and tucked it into a pocket of her dusty blue suit jacket.

“You’re here to see Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, I presume?”

“We are, yes,” Angel answered.

“So where is Percy?” Spike asked, lifting the corner of his mouth into a playful smile.

Mrs. Constantine measured him: shorter than his companion, slighter build, the hair gelled down to a blinding shine, a leather coat in good condition and could give a person the reputation of an old-fashioned goth like the ones who used to dally in the city centre. But then, this wasn’t a person who would spend daylight hours sitting on a street corner; it was a vampire. One with a soul, she reminded herself, and an invitation from the Director. She forced herself to ignore her training in order to do her job.

“I’m Agatha Constantine, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce’s personal secretary. He was expecting you. He is, however, presently discussing forensic details with DI Meilinger from Thames Valley. You’re to wait here.”

“Yes, grandma,” Spike retorted, relishing the sight of her pale blue irises as they disappeared under narrowing eyelids.

Behind her, a man in a black pinstripe suit, his shirt a slightly different colour black, emerged from the hallway, the heels of his shoes thudding on the hard wood. Mrs Constantine turned and bade him goodbye. DI Meilinger smoothed down what was left of his red hair, and nodded to Mrs. Constantine before he left the building.

“Now what?” Spike asked.

The elderly Watcher glanced at Angel, who had wandered off to investigate an eighteenth century French tapestry that depicted the slaughter of innocents by a small band of vampires. She waited until she thought the familiarity of the Marseilles incident unnerved him, then returned her attention to Spike with a smile that sent shivers down his spine.

“The briefing has obviously concluded. I’d appreciate it if you … gentlemen would make your way down the hallway behind me, straight ahead. Tea will be served in the office within ten minutes. Please don’t keep the Director waiting.”

 

~*~

 

Once the sun set, David ventured out on his first city visit since his turning. He walked up Iffley Road, embellishing his fantasy about St. Hilda’s. One of the few single sex colleges left in the University, it was like an orchard, where the ripest fruits were there for the tasting. In this, the latest version of his fantasy, he pruned his way through the women’s college, sampling from every tree. Even dried, old prunes tasted sweet. Those he didn’t consider a delicacy were weeded out. He spared no one, not even the security guard at the front gate. And the day his fantasy became reality would be one of the sweetest.

A good, aggressive wank under Magdalen Bridge allowed him to continue without the throbbing that had made walking painful. Up the High and right on Catte Street, past more colleges, where students would be studying for Michelmas exams. Little did they realize that beneath their windows, he plotted the revenge that would cap his rise to illustriousness.

Since the next step inhis plan involved public sightings, he decided to stroll past all his old haunts: the Bodelian, the King’s Arms, Blackwell’s. But there, in the front window of the bookshop, he saw something that stopped him dead in his tracks.

_Blood Red Streets_ by William Wadsworth.

“Fucking hell!” David screamed.

Not only had the stupid git survived the explosion, he’d actually dared to call those disgusting pieces of tripe poetry and publish them. Chewing on his lower lip until he tasted the copper-tinged liquid, David came up with a brilliant tact, one of his best. Oblivious to the stares of disbelief, he punched in the security glass of the display window and grabbed the closest copy of the book.

Wadsworth’s maudlin verses could be used for light entertainment.

 

~*~

 

Spike burst through the door without ceremony. “You know, she’s no Harmony, that one. Bet she’s out there looking for Hansel and Gretel. And you…you don’t look a day over,” Spike leaned across the desk, “Okay, you’ve greyed a lot, lots of creases on the forehead. Oi, you’ve aged, mate.”

“Hello, Spike,” Wesley said. “Angel. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

Wesley’s office was, in Angel’s opinion, massive. Edged on the north and south with bookshelves tall enough to require ladders, it reminded him of a library. A small desk, each with a monitor and keyboard, were nestled on either side of the door. Placed strategically in front of a large, bay window stood an oak desk as large as Angel’s at Wolfram and Hart but twice as heavy and ten times as old. A state of the art computer was to Wesley’s right, his phone system to his left. Something was off, however. None of the characteristic clutter was scattered across the blotter. The curtains were drawn, despite the season, and the banker’s light did little to dispel the darkness in the room.

Spike looked between the two of them. “Bloody hell, you two were so tight, staff thought you were attached at the back. Now, no hugs, no smiles, no how-d’ya-do’s?”

“We have time to catch up later, Spike.”

“Indeed,” Wesley said, extending his hand toward the chairs opposite the desk. “You’ll be staying at my house. The rooms are prepared and my chauffeur has already taken your luggage.”

Angel sat down in a chair across from Wesley’s large oak desk. Spike shook his head and began climbing the closest ladder. Wesley grabbed the arms of his chair and sat.

“I’ll get straight to it, shall I? We’ve had a slate of vampire attacks, world-wide, nothing new, but the targets have been Watchers, potential Slayers, and a number of full Slayers.”

“So?” Spike asked from the top rung “Watchers are prime targets, and the ones who go out patrolling with teenage girls are easy pickings.”

“These feel different than patrol-related incidents.” The instant Wesley said it, he regretted the stupidity of the wording.

“’Feel’?” Angel asked. “Since when do you rely on intuition and feelings?”

Spike turned and watched the interaction. His money was on Angel starting an argument and trying to take charge or simply storming out. The flight had been broken by random grumblings, which made Spike wonder why Angel had agreed—for both of them, he wasn’t asked, just told—to come and assist on the basis of a five-minute phone call. Then again, he mused, anything that got Angel’s bile up was a pleasure in his books.

The door burst open and a silver tea trolley rattled into the room, Mrs. Constantine steering. Spike put a volume back on the shelf and slid down the ladder. Conversation halted, with the exemption of polite “thank yous”, while Mrs. Constantine dispensed mugs of warmed blood, and offered platters of finger sandwiches. For Wesley, she poured a cup of tea and placed it in front of him. She turned the handle to point toward his arm then went back to the trolley. Spike rolled his eyes at the pedantic behaviour and watched as she put a small plate of sandwiches to the left of the teacup.

Once she received a quiet “thank you” from Wesley, she sat in a small chair behind him and to his left.

“I don’t normally rely on intuition, as you well know,” Wesley returned to the discussion guardedly. “Thus, I was hoping your insights might shed light on this.”

“And you couldn’t do this over the phone or the internet?” Angel asked. “You said it required our urgent presence.”

“No, I don’t think I could have adequately explained the situation. I believe you’ll understand when you hear the details.”

 “You lot can’t figure it out? It’s your job and all. Might good bouquet of blood, by the way.” He lifted his mug at Mrs. Constantine, who simply raised an eyebrow.

“Unfortunately,” Wesley responded, “memories of the First are still fresh among our older Watchers. In addition, the victims were colleagues, relatives, friends. The girls had been here for training, summer camps and the holidays, a tradition established by Giles. I’m afraid they’re all rather too close. I need people who can be objective about this.”

Wesley reached out for a small sandwich then chose another one from the plate. His eyebrow quirked briefly when he bit into it.

“You’ve got the forensics,” Spike said. “We saw the Thames Valley bloke earlier.”

“We do, yes, but DI Meilinger was here about a murder which occurred at the weekend.”

“And your feeling,” Wesley heard the reservations in Angel’s voice, “is that this is related as well?”

“I haven’t had the chance to review the case thoroughly. But I have my suspicions.”

Wesley slowly raised his teacup and sipped the tea. Angel watched as Wesley drank and placed the cup gingerly back onto the saucer.

“So, you want us to play detectives for you?” Spike prompted. “Why don’t you do it? Some of us have night lives.”

“He can’t, Spike,” Angel answered. “Wesley’s blind.”


	2. Chapter 2

David ran across Broad Street and jumped over the Sheldonian’s fence. The improbability of the witnesses’ accounts would give him time to scramble up and across the theatre’s domed roof, then over the wall onto Exeter College to think. Safe from the police, he skimmed the poems while he sucked on his knuckles and spit out shards of glass.

After a reasonable pause (he had a schedule to keep, after all), he strolled purposefully down Broad Street and jumped into the first cab at the taxi rank, instructing the driver to drop him off at the Phoenix Cinema. From there he jogged the short distance to the row house with its lapis lazuli blue door, matching window frames and window boxes with dead geraniums. He sat in a darkened doorway and waited.

The suburb of Jericho is an innocuous place for a demon hunter to live, let alone raise a family, which was exactly why white-collar Spiro Constantine had bought the dump. David remembered the tortuous, nauseating trips from their home in Norwich to Oxford, only to be banished to another room, and then returning to eavesdrop on hushed conversations between his father and the Constantines. His favourite visit happened in 2002, when harbingers of the ultimate Apocalypse were killing people in the most gruesome fashions. The details of those murders still fuelled David’s imagination.

When both her husband and son died that year, Mrs. Constantine tried to retire from active work, but was asked to advise on the reorganisation of the council. And the old bat never left; she was still interfering in matters that shouldn’t concern someone of her social standing and age.

He glanced at his watch: punctuality was that woman’s middle name and yet, it was almost six o’clock.

“Where the hell is she?” he growled at stray cat. “Why on the day I have a tight schedule?”

He scanned the book again and found a title that suddenly tickled his fancy. Luckily, Wadsworth had chosen an artsy publisher who had conveniently started the poems on odd pages. That meant the back of this one was blank and he could personalise it and push it through the mail slot.

Cackling, he ripped out the page and folded it into thirds.

 

~*~

 

“Blind? You could’ve said something!” Spike shook his head. “All those missed opportunities, moving furni—”

“What happened?” Angel interrupted, his mood worsening now that he realized he'd not been informed of pivotal events in the life of someone he considered a friend. What else didn't he know? Why had they let it slip this far, gone on this long?

Wesley shrugged. “There was an accident.”

Mrs. Constantine snorted, the vulgar sound causing both Angel and Spike to whip their heads around to stare. “It most certainly was not an accident. That boy was trouble from the minute he emerged from the womb. Such an incompetent Watcher has never,” she turned to make sure Wesley caught the direction and tone of her voice, “never, ever been allowed a place on this Council.”

Wesley closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was times like these he wished he still had glasses, so he could pull them off and wipe the lenses clean. Anything to concentrate his attention elsewhere. “David was just impetuous, strived too hard to make a name for himself, to be independent from his —“

“Absolute poppycock. Excuses from a soft heart,” Mrs. Constantine said. She turned to Angel. “Three years ago, David O’Leary, William Wadsworth, and Mr. Wyndam-Pryce went into a demon nest. The plan was clear-cut and should have been fool-proof, except O’—“

“Agatha, please,” Wesley said softly. “The boy is dead and this does none of us any benefit.”

Mrs. Constantine pursed her lips shut and stiffly folded her hands in her lap.

“Is O’Leary one of your victims?” Angel asked.

Wesley leaned back in the chair and smoothed the creaseless blotter in front of him. “His is a bit odd. He and another Watcher volunteered to investigate reports coming out of Golder’s Green. Reports say the scene was gruesome, bodies cannibalized. No faces, no hands left. Their bodies were identifiable only by the dental records.”

 “Actually,” Mrs. Constantine interrupted, pent up agitation forcing her words out in clipped tones. “Goldstein’s records were verified. But there wasn’t enough to identify O’Leary. All we had were clothes, wallet in the back pocket and his holo swipe card around what was left of his neck.”

After a short, soft rap, the office door opened and a woman, struggling with a stack of file folders and a porcelain cup, breezed into the office. Her presence filled the room with a blend of roses, neroli and coffee. Her sable hair was the same shade as her suede-like skirt and both were set off by the coral pink silk blouse.

“So sorry I’m late. Hope I haven’t missed anything.”

“Nothing much, Mrs. Romanescu,” Mrs. Constantine said, her voice softening from her earlier anger. “Mostly male posturing of the pubescent variety, with a splash of denial and a pinch of unresolved issues.”

Spike thought he saw Mrs. Constantine almost smile at the two-thumbs-up she received from him. The gesture was not lost on Nadya, who caught the second-long crack in the other woman’s stoic façade.

“Oh, good. I do so hate to miss the fun,” she said as she placed the mug of coffee on the desk and the stack of papers on the floor. Smoothing the back of her skirt, she sat in the chair to Wesley’s right. After a measured glimpse toward him, taking in the drawn expression — sure sign of the beginning of a headache — she looked up and met Angel’s open regard. Grateful he had agreed to assist with the investigation, she forced herself to put aside history and smile in return.

 “Angel, Spike, please meet Nadya Romanescu,” Wesley said. “One of the RWC’s key consultants. I’ve asked her to join us, as she’s been involved with the analysis since the beginning. Nadya, Angel sits in front of me, and Spike is by the northern wall, I believe.”

“Consultant?” Angel asked, since the woman was hardly dressed for forensics or, as he would have expected from previous experience, for a Watcher.

“Linguistic,” Nadya quickly replied. “And cultural, when need be. Like you, I’m not from around here.”

Mrs. Constantine stretched her arm out and flicked her wrist, turning her watch face around. “Mr. Wyndam-Price, if you don’t mind, I need to take my leave. I promised William I’d be there tonight.”

“Yes, of course,” Wesley said. “I’d forgotten.”

“Him?” Spike held up a thin volume. “He’s the bloke you mentioned, right?”

Nadya smiled, her teeth a shocking white against olive skin and coral lipstick. “That’s his. The first reading is tonight at The White Flag. My daughter was upset, to say the least, that she wasn’t allowed up for it. She’s absolutely besotted with him.”

“A number of the seniors in Hampshire are attracted to him. He has that tall, blond footballer appeal that makes pubescent teenagers drool,” Mrs. Constantine noted, with a nod of agreement from Nadya. “At any rate, William signed one of the books for her when he dropped Mr. Wyndam-Pryce off this morning. It should appease her until her next mood swing. Makes me glad I had only a son.”

“Oi,” Spike started as Mrs. Constantine approached the door, “I could stand for some culture and a pint. Need an escort for tonight?”

She chuckled at the offer. “I prefer mine with a pulse and closer to my age, but thank you.”

 

~*~

 

The train journey from Hampshire had given her plenty of time to fantasize about the night ahead. She’d sneak into the estate’s upper basement, through the secret entrance she and her brother had discovered when they were kids and pick up something to eat from the pantry before heading off to meet with Mark, who was driving down from Kidlington. Everything was planned, down to the fake ID Nikolai had made for her over summer. She brushed her long raven locks, smoothing down the cascading curls and tying it back into a ponytail.

When the train left Didcot, she picked up her mobile and dialled. Her coffee brown eyes twinkled with excitement and laughter; everything was going perfectly. William would notice and be **so very** happy she’d travelled all this way to be there for his debut.

“Right on time for once. Nary a leaf on the track, big brother.”

“Lucky you,” Nikolai whispered into his mobile. He left the common room and went to stand outside on the stone porch. “If you get caught, Alexis, I’ll have nothing to say.”

“God, how you drone on, Nik,” she answered, opening a compact and checking her makeup. “He won’t find out. Not unless someone tells him.”

“Your fortune telling talents suck. Uncle Josef said you couldn’t read tarot if he put the words on the back. It’s a lock-down, remember? Room checks? And Lacky Lankrey tells him everything.”

Alexis snapped the compact shut and replaced it in her backpack. “Vic is covering for me, so long as I get William to autograph the book for her.”

“Vic’s brains are made of kasha. She’ll never pass her Watcher exams.”

“Ga-ahd! Not everyone here wants to babysit some superego, permanently PMSed bitch and save the world from vampires. Vic wants to be a writer.”

Nikolai clucked in disgust. “Probably romance novels.”

“And the problem with that is, what? Actually, she wants to write books on magic and werewolves and shit like that. Okay, werewolves having magical sex, but hey! Take the porn wherever you can get it.”

“Whatever.”

“You’re such a fucking snob.”

 “Make sure you’re alert and aware,” he said.

“Why are you so freaked? It’s not like we haven’t broken curfew before. It’s Monday, no one expects anyone to sneak out of the residence hall on a weekday. And the Council building will be pretty empty by the time I get there.”

“This isn’t a curfew, Aly. It’s a lock-down. Ordered by the RWC’s Director. You remember him, right? The guy who lives in our house?”

“Oh, yeah. The blind guy who knocked you onto your ass last Saturday outside The Victoria’s Arms.” Alexis’s heart started to race when she saw Osney. “Next stop’s mine! Love you, you thief.”

 

~*~

 

Agatha walked through the front door, and tossed her purse and briefcase onto the hallway table. After a quick inspection of her hair in the oval mirror, she turned around and bent down to pick up the mail scattered on the mat in front of the door.

Walking down the hallway to the kitchen, she sorted through the stack: the telephone bill, notification of street works to be started the following week and finished within a fortnight (ha!), a Church jumble sale flyer, a postcard from Japan, and another flyer.

She put the mail on the table and filled the kettle. While the water heated, she returned to the last flyer. She opened it and smiled. It was simply a page from William’s book. “Homecoming,” the poem he wrote when he’d been dismissed from months of rehab after the “accident” that had cracked vertebrae in his spine. He had been forced to re-evaluate his future when he learned he’d no longer be fit to do the family job for which he’d trained all his life.

The page was addressed by hand to “Agatha Constantine”; the handwriting was familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

The kettle popped and the poem was returned to the stack of mail.

 

~*~

 

“You asked for our help,” Angel prompted, hoping to get to the heart of the matter. He wanted to get it done, and maybe then coerce Wesley into that conversation he had wanted to have ten years ago, before all things in their universe had imploded.

Nadya picked up the stack of folders and handed one to Angel, while holding another out to Spike. Spike came forward, sliding a copy of _Blood Red Streets_ into his duster’s pocket. He took the offered folder and plopped into the chair Mrs. Constantine had earlier occupied, propping his feet up on Wesley’s desk.

“We arranged the files chronologically, and eliminated those we felt weren’t pertinent,” Wesley began. His hand slid across the desk to his keyboard. Within seconds, the machine chimed and whirred to life.

“Open folder ‘Director, dash, UNS.’” The computer purred in response. “Read files chronologically. Begin with ’17-09-13’.” The computer purred again, and in a soft Texan drawl began:

“17 September, 2013. Virginia Raleigh of Havelock, North Carolina, United States, discovered murdered in Plymouth, where she was visiting on unofficial business. A Watcher with fifteen years experience, nine …”

The familiarity resuscitated a grief Angel had thought long dead and buried; wanting to allay the discomfort, he tuned out the recitation and studied the others. Spike sat restlessly in the chair and flipped through the folder. Nadya followed the printed copy, moving down the page with a pencil as a guide. Wesley seemed to be lost in the details, eyelids squeezed shut while he pinched the bridge of his nose; Angel could feel the headache throbbing behind his blue eyes.

"5 October 2013, Geofrey Dunlain of Essex, found slain in the Tube Station at Euston. A Watcher with five years experience,” the computer informed them while Angel tried to read along in the file.

“Right,” Spike said, taking his feet off the desk and sitting up straight. “No one just a **little** bothered by the voice coming out of that bloody box?”

“Pause,” Wesley ordered. “Is there a problem, Spike?”

"'Allo!” Spike looked around. “That’s Fred.” He glanced at Nadya, hoping to not have to explain his anxiety. She stared blankly at him. “She was a good friend and,” he pointed at Wesley, “the love of his life. Before she died, that is.”

“I know, but your point being?” Nadya asked.

He shrugged. “It’s a bit off, 's all, having a dead person speak to you.”

Nadya chuckled and shook her head.

“Open System preferences, system, speech. Change default voice to ‘Victoria’,” Wesley commanded. “Close system. Read file '11-10-13'.”

“Report summary last up-dated, 21 October, 2014 by James Sutton,” a feminine mid-West accent intoned. “On 11 October, 2013 Patrick O’Leary…”

“Better?” Nadya asked. “Or do you empathize with the robotic as well as the dead?”

Spike scrunched his face in mockery, but nodded.

“Is he related to the man who caused the accident? Killed by the same vampires?” Angel asked.

“Yes and we believe so,” Wesley answered. “The bodies were posed, as were most of the others.”

“Posed, how?" Angel fanned through the pages. "The computer didn't say and I don't see it here.”

“It is in the addendum James included, probably next page. The family was placed around the dining table. As was Patrick. To mimic familial intimacy.”

“They’re **all** posed?” Spike asked, thumbing through the folder. “And all Watchers?”

“Most of the ones we've retained were posed, and mostly Watchers. Some included Slayers-in-training, some had family members, and then the two Slayers, with upper case ‘S’s.”

“Blimey,” Spike said and whistled. “I thought I was the only one to kill two Slayers. I mean, Dru killed one, but I—”

“Am terribly gruesome?” Nadya asked with a mischievous smirk. Spike waggled his eyebrows.

“Case 09-02-14,” Wesley recited. “Slayer Jacqueline DuPont, originally from Brooklyn, New York was killed along with her Watcher, Sebastien Girard, in Marseilles. They were there assisting with the investigation into the lycanthropic _Dhole_ cult. They’d visited here for New Year’s and left shortly thereafter. Their bodies were posed, entwined on a bed, with rose petals scattered around the flat.” Wesley waited a moment, for the rustle of papers to stop, then started the second case. “In August of 2014, in Shanghai, just before the latest epidemic closed the borders, a Slayer named Zhen Ti’en Tai was slain in an historic temple. Her neck was broken, her body positioned at Buddha’s feet. Those are the only two Slayers, thus far."

“What do you suspect?" Angel asked. "A cult?”

“Doubtful,” Wesley answered. “But possibly an inside job.”

“Vampire Watchers?” Spike laughed. “Repeat after me: ox-y-mo-ron.”

“Are you suggesting, joking aside,” Angel asked, leaning forward, “That these victims' movements were known ahead of time? From what I can see they were all over Europe.”

“Actually, with travel basically borderless and, weather permitting, rapid, it isn’t difficult to arrange,” Wesley said. “Enough of a Watcher’s general schedule is known so that they could be followed and perhaps stalked.”

“Who do you know was out of the country on all these dates?”

A high-pitched whistle, followed by two clangs erupted from the small box above the desk with the remaining copies of Wadsworth’s book. The ceiling lights flashed while the alarm repeated a second and third time. Outside, dogs barked and pulled on their chains, their handlers encouraging them to sniff out the cause of the clamour.

“It seems there’s been a breach in our security,” Wesley informed them. “To answer your question, the only person we know of who was in any of those areas at the times of the murders was William Wadsworth.”

 

~*~

 

From the northwest gable, David watched the scurry. He had planted the poem just inside the upper basement’s access door, the opening of the door triggering the system. With his strength and agility, neither of which he had possessed in life, he then scrambled up the waterspout and on to the roof.

Directly across from his vantage point, he noticed an rare and unusual sight: not only was the bitch's car still there, but the BMW altered to transport vampires with a minimum of residual dust was parked in the Director's allotted space. Two ideas fought for supremacy in David's brain: either the Director was narrowing down his suspects, which would be ahead of schedule, but still workable; or, and this one had his head reeling with excitement, the Director had called in his markers and Angel himself was in the country.

Below, half of the security patrol ran to his right, one dog frantically in the lead, wheezing and coughing as the handler pulled on the leash to control him. The other half of the patrol, Jenkins and his mad dog Fritz included, went toward the southern access. David scrambled over the gable’s roof to follow the second party. They disappeared from sight, just as shouts confirmed that the slip of paper had been discovered.

Moments later, the second group of handlers emerged from the basement, Fritz pulling Jenkins who was struggling with something else. Fritz was no longer excited, but happy, his tail wagging, ears straight, tongue hanging out of its mouth, casually.

All of which meant that the something was not only human but that David’s plans had taken a delicious turn for the better.

 

~*~

 

"I see. Well, then, bring everything to my office," Wesley said, then hung up the phone. “Back to the investigation before we are interrupted again. William is not under suspicion.”

“Why not? He was there for most of the killings,” Angel said.

“No,” Nadya said. “He’s not capable. He hasn’t the strength to do any of that.”

“Do what? Move a few bodies around? Even Angel could do that,” Spike retorted.

Wesley shook his head. “William was severely disabled in the blast. He spent months trying to come to terms with the fact he might not walk, let alone was no longer deemed employable by the previous Board of Directors.”

“There ya have it,” Spike said. “Revenge.”

“Take a different tact,” Wesley warned. “William was retained to be my personal assistant while he, we recovered. The research he did for me, both here and in Europe, was invaluable.”

“On the other hand,” Nadya interrupted. “William did know almost all of those killed.”

Wesley’s eyebrow quirked, but before he could respond, someone knocked forcefully on the office door. “Come in, Jenkins.”

A tall redhead with shoulders so broad he looked as if he was about to burst the seams of his ill-fitting Marks and Spencer’s suit, came in and handed Wesley a slip of buff paper. “This was found inside the northern access door, sir. The door had been ripped off the hinges.” Jenkins waited for a moment, “It’s one of Will’s poems, sir, ‘Revivification,’ the one he dedicated to you.”

“Analysis,” Wesley said and stretched out his hand to give the paper back. “No sign of anyone?”

Jenkins coughed and shuffled his feet. He glanced at Nadya, then at the other two men seated in the office. “Not in the northern access. No, sir.”

“Jenkins, why is Fritz quiet?” Wesley pressed. He dropped the piece of paper on the desk. “I’ve two vampires in my office and your dog is silent. My blood has suddenly chilled at the possible explanations for this anomaly.”

With a second scan over those in the room, and a heavy sigh, Jenkins walked back to the door and dragged the waiting intruder into the room.

“Alexis!” Nadya yelled.

 “We found her in the southern basement, in catering’s pantry,” Jenkins explained. “Setting up for an overnight stay, it appears.”

“I suspected as much,” Wesley said softly. “Thank you and your team, Jenkins, and please make sure Fritz gets extra rations. Courtesy of Miss Romanescu’s stipend, of course.”

An awkward silence reigned, until the door latch clicked securely shut.

“Alexis Liliana Katerina Romanescu!” Nadya growled. “You violated a lock-down? For what? A poetry reading? It’s not like you haven’t heard them all before!”

The petite teenager took stock of her audience, her dark eyes narrowing menacingly at the two she thought she recognized from the stories. She came up with a retort, opened her mouth, reconsidered, and clamped it shut.

Wesley rose and went to the window. He turned his back to the group and took a deep, audible breath before he spoke. “This blatant violation of my orders cannot go unpunished, Alexis. There are reasons for the lock-down.”

“Yeah, well, no one told us!” she snapped. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the slight, blond one grimace and shake his head.

“No matter how unique your circumstances and destiny, you are a pupil in the Council’s boarding school. As such, you are still a minor, under my protection and therefore needn’t be told anything unless I deem it in your best interest.” His tone was even, his stance relaxed, but since she was unable to judge his expression, Alexis struggled to keep the lid on her boiling rebellion.

“Do **not** think of arguing with me at this moment, young lady,” Wesley cautioned. He pushed the curtain aside and opened one of the lower windows. Hand crossed, he stood there breathing in the cold air, knowing that the pause was eating away at the girl behind him. He’d seen, and heard, Nadya discipline both of her wilful children. He envied her her confidence.

“Alexis,” he said quietly. “My tenure as Director is fragile enough without you, of all people, defying me.”

“Fine,” she said, her shoulders slumped. “I won’t go to the reading.”

“That’s not, I’m afraid, equal to the disrespect you’ve exhibited.”

Even with years of dealing with potential Slayers and Watchers, all of whom were being bombarded with equal doses of hormones and destiny, Wesley found it impossible to mete out discipline without worrying he would turn into his father. He turned around to face her and wished he could see how much she’d grown.

“Your summer is mine,” Wesley said, trying to keep his voice even. He could feel Alexis’s disappointment and knew he’d pay in blood for his decision.

“What?” Alexis stared into his sightless eyes, her own widening with realisation. “No! You promised! I’ve gotten distinctions all year. That’s not fair!”

She spun around. “Mama!” she screamed, no longer caring that there were strangers there with them. “He hates me! Don’t let him do this!”

Nadya stared at her daughter. “You went too far. You broke the school rules and the decision of the Director. He chooses your punishment.”

“Alexis, you will not go to Walachia to visit your Uncle and his family,” Wesley said and paused. The headache that came every evening already threatened to blossom into a full-blown migraine, and the next part was going to result in a screech that would shatter indestructible windows.

“You will remain in Oxford and assist with the Slayers-in-training.”

 

~*~

 

David walked into the smoky, dimly lit pub, strolled to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic. He doubted anyone in this plebeian crowd would actually recognise him, but wherever he sat, it would have to be out of view. As it turned out, the idyllic spot where he could watch both Wadsworth and Mrs. Constantine, who, he was certain, would come to hear her prized puppy, was against the side of the bar.

He'd sat there for about a quarter of an hour, surveying the scene and concocting ways to accommodate his earlier discovery, when he almost spit out his drink. Who should swagger up to the bar but the confirmation to David’s second theory: the scar over the eye, hollow cheekbones, even the ancient duster exactly as described. While he waited for the publican to fill his order, the ridiculously thin vampire skimmed over the audience, briefly making eye contact with David. David smirked with self-satisfaction. From his vantage point, he could not only see each of his intended prey and his competition, he could hear everything the princess and her newest black knight said.

 Spike brought his pint of Whitbread and a bottle of Coke to the table and looked down at a sullen Alexis Romanescu. As far as David could tell, her attention was focused in front of the stage area, on a strawberry blonde with voluptuous curves, who bestowed a friendly smile on everyone in the room. Such open warmth was always suspicious in David’s opinion, deserving of a public smack down, but he could always add her name to his list later. He returned his attention to the nearby table and the fantasies they generated.

After a long pull of his ale, Spike crossed his arms and frowned at the girl. “Are you going to continue to be a petulant brat, or thank me?”

“Whatever.” Alexis daintily sipped her Coke. “Thank you for rescuing me from a fate worse than death. You’re a real hero.”

“Cor,” Spike laughed. “What a bloody drama queen you are.”

The object of Alexis’s envy rose from her table and tested the microphone. When the raucous reception died down, she introduced herself as “Meg the legendary publisher” and announced that William would be out in ten minutes, books would be on sale at the bar afterwards and in both Blackwell’s and Thorton’s at any time. She shared a joke with someone behind her then returned to her table, at which Mrs. Constantine sat nursing a Guinness. Together, they surveyed the burgeoning crowd, waving and nodding to friends in the audience. David watched while Spike raised his pint and Mrs Constantine returned the gesture with a grin.

Spike returned to his conversation. “Percy’s not that bad.”

“Who?”

“Percy. ‘Cause he was ‘head boy’ ‘n all.” David mentally switched places. He gazed into those heavily lidded, dark brown eyes and smiled. “Never mind. Joke must be lost on your generation. Anyway, things could’ve gone worse. You’re here, right?”

“Worse?” she repeated with a screech. “What can possibly worse than wasting your summer with wannabe Slayers?”

“What’s wrong with Slayers?”

“They’re fascist bints.”

Spike nodded. “Yeah, they can be. Not all of them.”

“They wouldn’t know a glass paperweight from an Orb of Thesula.”

“Like you do?” Spike asked. “It’s a gypsy gizmo. Not something they give out on the street, Watcher brat or not.”

“It’s my duty to know.” Alexis twirled the straw in her coke and watched the ice cubes and slice of lemon spin around. “You work with him. You know Angel’s history, about his soul?”

David caught himself nodding in response.

“Well, yeah. I was there, ducks. When it happened.”

Alexis looked at him, disbelief and revulsion briefly flowing across her features. “We’re not Kalderash,” she said. “But Nikolai will be the first Sinti Watcher. Wesley, Mr. Giles and a few others had to fight hard to get us into the programme. It’s our duty to protect our peoples, so it won’t happen again.”

“That’s a heavy burden to put on a kid who goes AWOL for a spot of poetry.”

Alexis turned and stared at him for what David thought was an infinity. “Okay, it was stupid, but William was there for us when my dad took sick. And he was brill when he stayed with Wesley.” She leaned toward Spike. “Plus, he is so goddamned cute.”

Spike leaned in, so close he could smell her perfume and feel her breath on his face, and David felt the turgid bulge against his zip. “Well, Mr. Goddamned Cute is on.”

With Alexis’s attention focussed on the stage, Spike turned and met David’s glassy-eyed glare.

 

~*~

 

“Headache still there?”

“Much better, thanks to the Panadeine and Spike,” Wesley answered and paused his email mid-post. He moved the chair back, turned toward Nadya’s voice. “I will have to deal with her accomplices tomorrow.”

“What’s really bothering you? You were like the Dnieper in winter,” she said. “Scared the vampire right out of the house.”

“Actually, I believe it was you who scared him with your genealogy.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” she answered and moved behind him. Her fingers combed through his hair and started to massage his scalp. “You heard Agatha today. You two have unresolved issues and you’re both trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore them.”

Wesley leaned back. “Nadya, he made a decision that affected everyone’s life, and none for the better.”

“Ah, I see. And you’ve never made an executive decision that affected someone’s life? Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that part of your present job description?”

“You know the story. Ours isn’t the same situation.”

Nadya’s hands moved to rest on his shoulders. “All right. What would you do?”

“I wouldn’t erase memories. That led us to make fatal decisions.”

“He did it to protect his son. Wouldn’t you do the same if Nikolai were to become suicidal and threaten the lives of others?”

Nadya turned Wesley’s chair around. He knew she was staring at him and would spend the rest of the night trying to persuade him to see things her way, even though they had already gone through this so many times in the past five years.

“Perhaps,” Wesley answered with a sigh and leaned his head against her. “Yes, I would. But it’s my fault Connor turned out as he did. I’m the one responsible for Angel having to make such a choice. Had I not been so gullible—”

“I’m sure Holtz would have found another way to harm Angel. Maybe one that couldn’t have been fixed with a mindwipe. Eleven years, Wesley. From what I’ve seen, Angel has forgiven you; you need to forgive him and yourself. Let go. It’s holding you both back and could cost you dearly.”

 

~*~

 

Angel followed Nadya’s directions to the Oriental Institute and the alley where Patrick O’Leary had met his death. The walk down Banbury and St. Giles had done little good to clear his head and allow him to concentrate on the details of the cases.

To keep an eye on Wadsworth, Spike had gone to the poetry reading, and finagled, with surprisingly little resistance, Alexis’s company. That left Angel to work with Wesley and delve into the files. It was a wonder, but no matter where he went, paperwork was sure to follow.

Details. Wesley could enumerate the cases—chronologically, geographically, according to expertise, seniority—but for Angel they all ran together. From amongst the heap, something in the minutiae screamed for his attention, but he couldn’t decipher what. He found that the particulars of Wesley’s life kept interrupting.

Once in Summertown, Nadya had guided him through her house, showing him the guest room with custom-made sun-block curtains. She had repeatedly apologized for Alexis’s behaviour and finally left him to settle in with the warning that the girl liked to sing loudly and off key. During the grand tour, Wesley had stayed in the kitchen, tending to the tasks Nadya had delegated to him. Angel recalled how comfortable Wesley felt in the Romanescu home, but it wasn’t until dinner was ready and Wesley was setting the table with practiced ease that he understood why.

After investigating the Institute, Angel continued toward the city centre. The other local murder sites, in Boar’s Hill and Yarnton, would have to wait until Wadsworth was available to chauffeur. Being a private home and newer murder site, the possibilities of finding clues at the Cowley address were greater. Still, there was little to tell Angel why Wesley felt it was linked to the others. They weren’t Watchers. Purportedly not known to anyone at the Council.

While the dishes were being cleared, and before Wesley had been ordered back into the dining room, Angel had glanced at the pictures arranged in the formal living room: portraits, the children’s father, from a generation or two before, photos of the two children, Wesley with the family. Each told a story, a scene from family life, everything detailed in the pose of those photographed or painted.

Among the first murdered had been the O’Leary family: David’s father, stepmother, younger sister. Edward Lhuyd in Milton Keynes had been covered in daffodils. Geordie Charles Smythe and his family had been arranged around their small Christmas tree. Michael Rush had been found in Lyon nestled beside to his Slayer-in-training, reading the _Necromanicon_. DuPont and her Watcher in Marseilles. Antonia Pusateri and her Slayer-in-training had been discovered outside the Vatican on Easter Monday; the girl was clutching a basket of chocolate Easter eggs. Julianne D’Arcy and her life partner had been laid outside the Sisters of Mercy convent in Zurich, a rosary twined between their fingers.

Someone, or some ones, had gone through a lot of trouble to position the corpses, to send the Council a message. Each murder scene, a snapshot. “To mimic familial intimacy,” Wesley had noted.

It was past ten o’clock when Angel arrived at the Tyndale house. Once inside the deserted home, Angel was able to visualize the murder scene: the husband, whose body had already started to bloat with gases by the time the police arrived, had been seated in the reclining chair, a glass of brandy on the side table. The wife had been placed on the sofa curled up on her side, the television left on to entertain the deceased.

Angel walked through the house, looking, sniffing for any clues a normal human might not detect. The dishes had been washed: a solitary wine glass, a paring knife, a small plate, a porcelain teapot and matching cup. On the counter, to the left of the dish drain but next to the stove, the butcher’s block was missing an additional knife.

Going up stairs, Angel wandered through the bathroom, the closets, the master bedroom, the study, the guest bedroom. While things appeared clean and tidy, essential, everyday items were missing: shampoo; toothpaste and a toothbrush; towels and sheets from the closet, the rest hastily shoved back in, while other shelves had not been disturbed; all but one pillow from the master bedroom with its queen-size bed; the duvet from the guest room. The police had surmised that squatters had broken in after the murder and helped themselves.

Except for the fact that the house had been locked and no signs of forced entry discovered.

Frustrated, Angel left Cowley and started back toward Summertown, absently retracing his steps.

“They began in England, then tore a path across Europe and Asia until, it appears, they returned home,” Wesley had said over dessert.

England, Angel mused, but then again O’Leary was from Ireland. Milton Keynes and the daffodils. Yorkshire, Lyon, Marseilles, Rome, Florence, Zurich, London again, Satu Mare in Romania, bouncing to Shanghai then back to Prague.

An intinerary. Postcards from a world-trip. Such a quixotic, Byronic thing to do.

As he neared the Carfax, Angel noticed a crowd in the small square. There, standing on a bench below the clock tower, a young man, his dark hair slicked back away from his pale face sang to his heart’s content. The crowd tossed requests his way, and he broke into song, loudly, drunkenly and very off-key.

“Man, I bet he knows every show tune there is,” a petite blonde said to her date. “Think of one he can’t know.”

“Yeah, like, what?” the boy asked. The girl on his arm shrugged and giggled.

The crooner finished his rendition of “Yellow Submarine” to roaring applause. He bowed, his bright white teeth shining under the street and spotlights, then cupped his hand over his ear.

Show tunes were shouted out in rapid succession, each rejected. Finally, the singer stretched out his arm to the couple in front of Angel and announced, “For you. A special tune. See if you can guess.” He faced the front again and sashayed a few steps, belting out “Got my tweed crest, Got my best vest, All I need now is the girl…”

Angel chuckled and continued on his way. As he passed Debenham’s, he paused and stared at the display windows with the mannequins posed in seasonal attire, promoting peace, love and family dinners with cooked goose and brussel sprouts.

Dinner had been a quiet but strained affair, and Angel had gotten no closer to an understanding of the case. What he had discovered was Nadya’s pride in Wesley’s controversial and onerous rise to the Directorship. And that the Romanescu trio take their obligations very seriously.

“Not Kalderash,” Wesley had explained after Nadya’s revelation, and added solemnly. “They have, however, personally adopted the entire gypsy history as theirs to keep and protect.”

The intinerary. The places, the timing. The return “home”. Been there, done all that—with Darla, Spike and Dru.

The spectre of culpability had driven Angel to seek fresh air, and now it propelled him back.


	3. Chapter 3

“Oi! Keep it down,” Spike whispered loudly against the bang of the door being forced open. “The live ones’re in bed.” Angel grunted as he walked briskly through the kitchen.

Ignoring the typical laconism, Spike returned to the day’s newspapers he’d found in the study: _The Times_ , _The Guardian_ , _LA Times, Oxford Mail,_ and _News of the World_. He’d just gotten to the _Oxford Mail_ ’s report on the latest outbreak of rat syphilis in the Thames when Angel stomped back in.

“Alexis made coffee. Man, has Wesley reverted to kind. He left a note that he would make Wadsworth available ‘after tea’ tomorrow. Guess that means we can catch up on some sleep and telly. Dyin’ to find out what’s what on _Coronation Street_.”

Angel slapped a pen and a legal pad on the table. “Write down your killings before you arrived in Sunnydale.” He went to the counter and poured a cup of coffee. “Start with your mother, and make them newsworthy.”

Angel returned to the table in stony silence and waited. Despite his hesitation and no forthcoming explanation, Spike wrote, paused, flipped the page and wrote more. After three pages, he put the pen down.

“Cross out the ones you did alone. Now, think about Wes’s murders and where they occurred,” Angel said. “Then compare them with what we—you, me, Darla and Dru—did.”

“I don’t see your point. So what?”

“Look at your list, Spike. On Wesley’s we have not only the two Slayers, one from New York—”

“But she was killed in Prague.”

“Where Dru fell victim to a mob.”

“Two birds with one stone? Splendid,” Spike agreed, nodding and smiling.

“Look at your list, then Wesley’s chronological order. Your ‘schedule’ starts in August: China, Prague, northern Europe. DuPont’s out of synch, but I think the opportunity proved too tempting.”

“Yeah, buuuuttt, we went to California. These guys came here.”

“Come up with any other ideas?”

“Only Wadsworth, but Alexis just about has me convinced otherwise. In her mind, he’s a soddin’ angel.”

Angel nodded. “She’s a handful. Have to wonder if her brother is like the rest of the family.”

“Another one of God’s gifts. Even when you don’t ask, she sings his praises. If this were the 70s, she’d be doomed to be a groupie to their bleedin’ rock band. Find anything else at the murder sites?”

“Not really. How are you with show tunes?”

Spike shrugged. “Which one?”

“It goes: ‘Got my tweed crest, got my best vest.’”

“No idea,” Spike laughed. “Care to say why you care?”

“Some drunk was performing in the city centre. Can’t get it out of my head now.”

 

~*~

 

David waited across the street; the alcohol having worked its way out of his system, he could think clearly now. To see Spike **and** Alexis in the pub was a thrill that had sent him to OddBins for a bottle or two to carry him past last shout. He’d wandered into the Carfax, hoping to find a vagrant to snack on, but instead attracted a crowd with renditions of the Sondheim oeuvre. Soon after “Epiphany” from _Sweeney Todd_ , the requests had begun. In the middle of a Beatles’ medley, his idol, or rather, the creature who used to be a champion until he bit the wrong bird, had materialized. To his drunken glee—and he almost burst into peals of laughter when the realisation had hit him—David figured they were no closer to discovering his plan than before. That gave him courage to taunt, and the motivation to push the hunt up a day.

About four-thirty, the electrical dairy truck whirred past, right on schedule. It was Tuesday, which meant she’d ordered two bottles of milk, a bottle of orange juice, a block of cheddar and a dozen eggs. All of which the milkman put on her doorstep.

He settled himself in for the half hour wait. Predictability was a godsend.

Promptly at five, light in the stairway turned on, followed by the hallway and then the kitchen light. David counted to ten, then walked across the street and stood to the right of the front door, next to one of the lapis blue window boxes. He waited, holding the breath he no longer needed.

The door creaked open and she appeared, wrapped snugly in a blue terry cloth dressing gown and matching terry slippers. She bent down and had time to place the cheese on the carton of eggs before David jerked her right arm out of its socket and pushed her headlong into the building’s rough, grey masonry.

The eggs and cheese fell to the ground as David straightened his victim and propped her against the wall. Fighting for balance, she opened her eyes and stared at her attacker.

“I’m back. Miss me much?”

“No. Glad you were gone, to speak God’s truth,” she answered. Her arm hung loosely at her side, pulsating in agonising pain.

David wiped a finger across the blood trickling from her forehead. “They say head wounds bleed profusely.” He licked the blood from his finger. “Tasty, though.”

“Just do it, you bastard,” she rasped, her vision blurring and her head starting to throb along with her shoulder.

David frowned; his lower lip jutted out and curled under. “Where’s the fun in that?” Then again, the smell, sight and taste of blood had his hunger rumbling. His face morphed and he put his yellow eyes centimetres from her face.

“So what’s this all about, eh, David?” she stalled, willing one of her neighbours to come outside for their dairy delivery.

“Are you all so mind numbingly blind as he is? I left clues! Don’t log in by your allotted time and BAM someone checks on you. Fucking electronic diaries. I made sure that each Watcher was posed **just so**. And you…”

He leaned in closer, his breath a bouquet of cheap gin and rotting meat. She tried to turn her head, to get away from the smell before she vomited, but he squeezed her throat and pushed her head into the wall, sending blasts of pain through her skull.

“You and your meddling. Ever since I was in short pants you interfered. She was supposed to be mine, you bloody cow!”

“She? Nadya?” Mrs. Constantine managed a snort before he slammed her head again.

“Of course. She’s too young for the vampire fucker, but you kept at them until he gave in and shagged her. Proved she’s a slut, like all gypsies.”

“You’re not worthy of someone like Nadya. She deserves someone with intelligence, courage and compassion. You never had any of those.”

“Bitch!” He moved his hand to her hair and yanked, exposing her neck. “Doesn’t matter now,” he purred, mesmerized by the throbbing of her jugular. “I’ve a new plan, much better than I dreamed when I was with her. I’ll surpass those asswipe amateurs and break him into a tiny, inconsolable crackpot.”

He saw the questioning frown on her face, the V of her dove-grey eyebrows before he sunk his fangs into that pulsating vein.

“Get off her, you pervert!” David heard the scream approaching, just before he felt the crack of his skull.

He turned around, letting go off Mrs. Constantine, and briefly saw the pale willow as the cricket bat came into contact with his face.

“Get back, you ugly sonofabitch!” the mad woman screamed, and swung the bat into his stomach. “Beast!”

She prepared herself to swing again. David lifted his arms over his face and growled. Undaunted, the mad woman in the fluffy pink bathrobe swung, screaming, this time smashing his arm. As she raised the bat a fourth time, the lights in the two houses directly across the street came on and doors opened. Feeling the need for a strategic retreat, David sped off toward Walton Street, crashing into rubbish bins as he ran.

The woman leaned her sons’ bloody bat against the doorframe. “Agatha. Agatha, dear, it’s Dot. From across the street. Can you hear me?”

“Inside,” Mrs. Constantine murmured hoarsely. “Take me inside, please.”

Agatha’s neighbour stilled her horror at the amount of blood flowing down her face and her neck. She took the sash from her dressing gown and applied it to the wound on Agatha’s neck. “All right, and then we’ll call the ambulance, shall we?”

Dot helped Agatha to her feet and inside, constantly glancing over her shoulder for signs of the assailant’s return.

 

~*~

 

“I figured out some of it,“ Angel said, unceremoniously dragging a chair around to sit next to him.

“Mmm?” Wesley mumbled, his mouth full of egg and toast. He washed down the food with coffee. “Go on.”

“How much of Angelus’ history is recorded in the Council Archives?”

“I will admit, whatever you chose to tell me.”

Angel nodded; it was what he expected of a Watcher. “And, I can assume, whatever Giles knows.”

“Yes, safe to assume.”

“Marseilles? There’s that tapestry in the Council.”

“That was created from eyewitness reports,” Wesley said and dunked another piece of toast in the soft-boiled egg. “Hauntingly accurate testimonies. I mentioned once to Mrs. Constantine who I suspected the foreground couple to be.”

“Did you tell anyone else?”

“No. Giles may have, however.”

“Who knew of Spike’s Slayers?”

“We knew of the New York woman, but the Chinese Slayer? Not until he mentioned it the other day, actually. We recognized she was killed by a vampire, but no specifics.”

“Someone knows. Someone with access.”

“Or someone who knew us,” Spike said, entering the kitchen. He tossed a postcard down on the table, “From Dru. I got it a while back. The only one, and it’s from Prague. I just put the two dates together this morning, after our little exercise.”

Angel flipped over the card and read the message. “’Thinking of you and reliving old times’? September 15. When was the Prague murder?”

“September 13,” Wesley answered.

“Bingo,” Spike said. “Dru’s in on it.”

Angel leaned back. “I don’t think Dru’s doing the killings. I think she’s just revelling in them. Reliving old times.”

“So who is doing the dirty work?”

“Someone fascinated with us,” Angel suggested. “Someone recreating our past.”

Spike frowned and watched while Wesley absently put both hands around his coffee mug. “So which fanboy or fangirl, although I’m thinking we’re going male—“

“David O’Leary,” Wesley announced.

“Fits,” Angel agreed. “So it wasn’t his body in the explosion.”

“I’d venture to say ‘obviously not’,” Wesley said and took a sip of coffee.

“You’re taking this well,” Spike mused. “Didn’t you train him?”

“Yes. And I’m not taking it well. I’m actually quite incensed that I didn’t catch it before. I took too much for granted.”

“Right,” Angel said and rose from the table. “Where now?”

“We need to find him before he kills again. He had two obsessions at the time of his death.” Wesley pushed the chair back and stood. “You and Nadya.”

 

~*~

 

“Good morning,” Angel called out as he warily entered the lounge; he’d been on the receiving end of Alexis’s trial evil eye since his arrival. Unlike Spike, who seemed to have gained yet another admirer. “Anything good on?”

“Geez, it’s like one o’clock. For you dead guys that’s morning?” Alexis frowned and returned to her channel surfing. “At this time of day there is nothing but repeats for geriatrics. Might suit someone your age, though, huh?” She leaned back and smirked, enjoying his confused expression. “Kidding. Well, mostly kidding. You are old and the programming sucks.”

Angel joined her on the sofa. “Most networking executives assume children your age are in school. Don’t you have exams to study for?”

“I posted my assignment this morning. Wesley checked it for me. He had red marks all over the fuc—“

“Must be nice to have someone who’s willing to check your work.”

“Yeah, guess,” Alexis agreed and settled on SkyNews.

Memories of Wesley’s over-critical father and the pressures such a parent could impose upon a child flickered in front of his eyes. “Does someone else want you to be a Watcher more than you do?”

Alexis pushed her lip up so that it curled under her nose, reminding Angel how little of her childhood was left. “Nah, Don’t think that’s possible, but they expect so much more out of me and Nik than some of the others. You wouldn’t believe what **they** get away with just because they’ve been in it for generations. Plus, I don’t think Wesley slept last night, so he gets pernickety about my grammar and crap that isn’t going to matter when you’re up against a demon.”

“You’re probably right about the grammar. But Wes was asleep, Spike said he was in bed when I came back.” Angel turned and faced her rather than the latest reports of the epidemic as it continued to spread across Asia. “Do you know what an ear worm is?” When she nodded, he sighed. “There was this drunk trying to sing show tunes in the city centre. It’s driving me crazy, but I only know a few lines.”

Alexis smiled. “A drunk? Usually they sing football chants. Which musical was it, d’ya know?”

“Do I look like a show tunes type of person?”

Alexis shrugged and jumped up from the sofa as soon as a shrill jingle rang out. “Actually, you look very gay. If you want, my mom has a shit load of CDs and DVDs of Rogers & Hammerstein, Sondheim, all sorts of poncy woncy musicals. She has lyric sheets, too. Check ‘em out.” She pulled open an oak cabinet to reveal shelves of jewel cases arranged according to title. With a mischievous grin, she skipped to the phone.

Angel walked over to the cabinet with a low whistle and ran his finger along the titles. He pulled out _Sweeney Todd_ ’s CD, looked over the lyrics then returned it, to pull out _Gypsy_.

“This will take forever,” he called out. He slid the lyrics pamphlet from the jewel case. “Wouldn’t it be easier if I sang it for you—“ Angel saw the shattered expression on Alexis’s face. “What happened?”

“Mrs. Constantine was attacked this morning. She just got out of surgery.”

 

~*~

 

David made it back to his refuge just as the sun rose. He’d limped through the city, sticking to the alleys and service roads. Once up the back path to the dilapidated house, he slid the loosened timber aside so he could slip inside the building.

Completely boarded up, the house where he had spent the first eleven years of his life was now targeted for demolition. In its stead, would stand a complex of five exclusive flats for the nouveau riche, who quickly bought up these southern sections of Oxford as soon as they were modernized and gentrified. All the memories he had would be gone, be replaced by ahistoric pieces of architectural crap.

He stormed through the darkened kitchen with its cracked and grease-encrusted linoleum, down the hallway and into the front room. He paced angrily in front of the torn, stained blue suede couch the previous owners had left behind, giving it a swift kick from time to time. How dare that other woman interfere! He’d given himself a day to revel in the old biddy’s death mask before he would continue. Now he had to revise his schedule and act sooner than he’d intended in case the bitch lived.

Revise. Rework. Regroup. David picked up and tossed the box of candles he had stolen from Sainsbury’s onto the stairs. He was going to be damned if he’d give up either of his last victims, so he had to work this out.

What would Dru do? Talk to her freaking dolls.

Spike would go straight for the kill, straight for his ultimate victim, but where was the arousal in that?

David paced the hallway. Angelus would stalk and torture, play games and keep them guessing. That seemed to be his forte. What was it Giles had written in the archive about his lovely Dru and Angelus? Using all the mnemonics at his brain’s disposal, David recalled the diary and the passage he sought.

Elated, he sprang up the stairs. The change in the wind as the front predicted in the weather report started to move in blew the shredded curtains in and out of the broken windowpanes. He paused at the door of what used to be his parents’ bedroom; or, it was until the day they’d found out about his mother’s affair. The door had slammed, and David, listening from the bathroom at the top of the stairs, had heard the accusations, the slaps. Some time during the night, his mother disappeared. No kiss, no hug, no word.

Shaking his head, David forced himself out of melancholy and back into his scheme. He walked past the study and into what had been his own bedroom, where he had set up his camp. The last owners had left a wrought iron double bed, complete with mattress. Sheets he’d stolen from the Tyndale house lay stacked on a crate next to the bed. He stripped off his clothes and plopped onto the bed.

After plumping up the pillows, David spent the day acting out all the things he would do with his proxy whore.

 

~*~

 

After he’d made the phone call, William waited outside the door, steeling himself for what beckoned him. He knew that as her contact person, he’d get a phone call, but he’d always thought it would be as a result of a heart attack, stroke, of something natural. In their line of duty vampires were always the primary cause of death, but at her age, with her years of field experience, having survived a husband, a son and numerous colleagues, she had seemed impervious to attack. Somehow he’d always thought that she would outlast him.

He walked into the semi-private room, past an empty bed, trying not to wonder why it was so tidy and the sheets crisp and sterile. Agatha, the woman who’d taken him under her wing when he’d arrived fresh from the Academy, waited just under the window, her white hair covered with even whiter gauze, her neck bandaged in the same material. Tubes went into her nose to help her breathe, into her hand for blood and medication; wires were attached to the clip on her finger, feeding information to the monitors to her right. Her face was swollen, red, already starting to turn shades of purple and black from the bruising where her face had hit the wall.

DI Mellinger had called him personally, informed him of the revenge feel of the attack. But what the witness couldn’t know, or failed to comprehend was **what** had done this to Agatha. The bite wound on the neck, the anaemic colouring confirmed that this was a vampire attack. Even more, William knew **which** vampire had done this and why the attack “appeared to be personal.”

All he could do now was wait until Wesley came to share in his vigil. Neither of them was in any shape to hunt David down, but they had at their disposal the two who were most likely to figure out David’s next move.

But, by God, he wanted to be there when David was dusted.

He glanced at his watch. The call to his mobile had come at eight-thirty, after Agatha had been processed and the witness’s report filed. He immediately called Wesley’s office, and was asked to call again the moment Agatha had come out of surgery. It would take them twenty minutes to drive to the John Radcliffe from the Council’s building. Forty-five if they went home and picked up Alexis.

William heard the elevator bell and within minutes, the familiar cadence of an accent twenty years away from Kiev. He stood and rubbed his hands over his face. When he turned to face the door, Nadya was guiding Wesley into the room by the arm. Alexis walked behind them, her eyes red and puffy, her olive skin ashen, but otherwise remarkably in control. She tried to smile a greeting, but ended up with the left side of her mouth twitching. William nodded and smiled weakly.

“Ever so sorry, William,” Wesley called out. He took Nadya’s hand from his arm, raised it to his lips, then waited until he was sure she was seated before he let go. “Please. Tell me what you see.”

William moved to stand beside Wesley. “Severe head and facial trauma, loss of blood, shoulder out of joint, bandage on the neck. Certainly a vampire. Left biter. One who taunted Agatha before biting.”

“Vitals?” Wesley asked under his breath, hoping to hear other than what he suspected.

“Weak, sir.” William heard Alexis hiccup softly. “Even for post-op.”

“I want the bastard dusted, William.” Wesley reached forward until his fingertips touched the woollen hospital issue blanket. He stepped toward the bed, running his fingers up the cloth until he found Agatha’s hand.

“So do I, sir.”

“Why? She’s just an old lady,” Alexis asked. She walked over and stood beside her mother, who watched in tearful silence.

William grabbed a nearby chair and rested it against Wesley’s knees.

Wesley sat down with a nod of thanks then squeezed the cold, dry hand in his. “Not to those doing this, love. He knows exactly who she is and how much damage she can really do. Wants her out of commission.”

“He?”Alexis asked and looked to William for an answer. He kept his eyes diverted.

“Thank God for her neighbours,” Nadya whispered, ignoring Alexis’s question. “Maybe one of them saw something? The woman who came with her?”

“Good point,” Wesley conceded. “William, I realize how difficult this is for you, how close you and Agatha are, but I’d like you to continue today’s schedule as planned and then some time during the day perhaps you could go to and talk to Agatha’s neighbours? First, however, please take Alexis home.”

“I want to stay. Please?”

He stretched out his hand toward where he had left Nadya. Alexis stepped forward and took the offering. “Love, I need you to make some phone calls: the Council Executive—the numbers are on the speed dial for line four, Giles, Nik. I can’t do that here. No mobiles allowed. I’ll send your mother home before sunset.”

William took Alexis’s hand and led her, reluctantly, out of the room. When she turned around, Nadya was cradled Wesley, consoling him as his body trembled with hushed sobs.

 

~*~

 

Nikolai pulled his mobile out of his pocket and excused himself from the JRC meeting. He pulled the door shut behind him and shivered in the wind. “What’s up, sis? I thought they’d have sent you back by now.”

“Nik,” Alexis said and finally let her composure slide. She’d made all the calls Wesley had requested, repeating the information over and over again and answering whatever she could. The Council’s Executive would be meeting within the next forty-eight hours. Giles was coming up from Bath to visit Mrs. Constantine and lend whatever assistance needed.

“Mrs. Constantine,” she sniffed.

But now she didn’t have to pretend things were under control.

“Aly, talk to me,” Nikolai pleaded.

She wiped the tears and snot on the sleeve of her jumper. “You know those Watchers and Slayers that were bit?”

“Yeah.”

“He got her too, Nik. This morning,” Alexis said. “Mama’s still with her in hospital. Wesley sent me home to telephone people for him.”

“Can’t use mobiles in the hospital. You know that. Wesley’s okay?”

“Yes and no. He’s quite torn up, actually. But he’s gone back to the Council with them.”

“Them?” Nikolai paused. “Oooohhh, them. I take it they haven’t solved it yet?”

“Angel and Spike were talking about how what they did is so like what this vamp is doing. Places in the same order ‘n’ stuff.”

“Just one? Huh. So, why did he come back to England? Shouldn’t he be stalking some Slayer? Isn’t that what Angelus did, he caught Ru—oh, shit! What if they’re after Wesley, not a Slayer? If this vamp is trying to drive Wesley insane, he’d target the people closest to him: Mrs. Constantine, William—”

“Now you’re really scaring me. God, I wish you were here.”

Nikolai paused and found his breath caught in his throat, trapped by a knot of fear. “Aly? Wesley’s diary says that Angelus killed his father first. Remember how we used to think that was so Oedipal? How many of those Watchers had sons who’ve also died?” He waited for Alexis to put the puzzle together. “Think!”

She banged her forhead with the heel of her hand while she recalled the names. “One. Mr. O’Leary. David was such a sleaze. He used to follow Mama like a puppy after Papa died. And he obsessed about Angelus, remember? Asked all those questions. Wesley used to get so cheesed off.”

“What’s left to do? For David, I mean. What hasn’t he done that Angelus did. Or that Spike did before he went all hero?”

“I dunno. Nik? No gypsy.” Alexis started to tremble. “Oh, God, Nik. Mama.”

“I’ll leave as soon as I can. You stay in the house after sunset, and make Mama stay, too.”

 

~*~

 

Spike rolled his eyes at Angel, who sat impassively, his arms crossed over his chest and his face a portrait of boredom. Wesley was behind his desk, twirling a pen absently between his fingers, his expression blank.

A Watcher, every bit the Oxford stereotype dressed in a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, slammed the file shut dramatically and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “That’s the sum of O’Leary’s personal profile while he worked for us, sir.“ He looked to his partner, receiving from her a curt nod of approval.

“Bloody incompetent,” Spike announced. “You’re idiots. Why the hell do you patronize these prats, Wesley?” He turned to the pair. “The only reason you’ve wasted our time is because you’re terrified the Director here will fire your bloodless corpses. ”

“Spike,” Wesley warned. “Do calm down.”

“You’ve a better idea, then?” the brunette, with emerald eyes Spike noticed, asked as she glared at him through thick, dark eyelashes.

“Yeah, love. I do.” He rose and went to the stack of _Blood Red Streets_. Picking up one, he leafed through the pages. “You need to look at David, undoubtedly whack when alive, and then look at the one who turned him, even more certifiable. Combine the two with a drive for petty revenge and,” he turned to them, holding up the book, “voilà! Your next victim will be someone he hated who’s close to the ultimate target.”

“William? What makes you think he’s next?” Angel asked, shaking his head. “Wouldn’t Nadya be more likely?”

“Go straight for the heart?” Spike asked. “Where’s the sport in that? Willie here has everything our boy wants: since the old lady is taken care of, get rid of William and no one’s left watching Wesley’s family. Toy, Angel, toy.”

“We still don’t think he’s after the Director,” the brunette interrupted. “As Schaeffer stated, we feel his actions are aimed at those who held him back. You, sir, were the only one who went to his defense.”

“No one said David was bright, pet,” Spike retorted. “He’s not even smart enough to be original. Just look at his killings. They’re pale imitations of what we achieved. It’s like writing a Mills and Boon novel, where you have the template, prepared according to proven publishing success. Formulaic and uninventive.  I mean, where’s the sport in those killings? Where’s the adrenaline ru —“

“Enough, Spike. We understand that the thrill is important. But, could we please advance our theories?”

 The brunette turned to Spike. “I’d still like to know what makes you think he’s trying for the Director.”

“Because that’s what we’d do.” Angel shifted in the chair, the leather of his jacket crackling as he moved. “Angelus would stalk Wesley, terrify family, kidnap and kill friends, eventually challenge him directly.” The woman’s eyes were impossibly wide. “As Spike said, these’re weak imitations. I bet David initiated contact and planted the idea in Dru’s head. Then he went after his father, of course, because that’s what I did. He killed Slayers because Drusilla wanted to relive the old days with Spike. Watchers, because they all had what he wanted, they were alone in the field and vulnerable.”

“Except the Director launched electronic sign-ins and journaling,”

“Which must have added to the thrill, yeah?” Spike asked. “Think on it. David stalks only the Watchers who use the gadgets. He gives himself time to kill then takes off just in time to avoid—“

“William,” Wesley added. “Of course I’d send William to check. David counted on that.”

“Different question,” Angel suddenly said. “I saw David in the city centre, before I saw his photo. He sang a song, and I think he meant it as a message.”

“Why would you think that?” Wesley asked.

“I thought he was looking at the couple in front of me, he had a huge audience and those two were egging him on. Now I realize he was looking at me. Anyway, the lines I recall are ‘Got my tweed crest, Got my best vest, All I need—‘”

“’…is the girl’,” the brunette finished. “And that’s the title. ‘All I Need is the Girl’. It’s from a Sondheim musical called _Gypsy_.”

“Well, thanks for withholding information!” Spike turned to Angel. “Is he after Nadya or Alexis?”

“He’ll get neither,” Wesley answered. He stretched, and cracked his neck to relieve the tightness. At his command, the computer announced the late hour. “They’re both safe at home. Visiting hours are well over, so I suspect William went to Agatha’s after he drove Nadya home. Which, by the way, is where we should head for the night. Ms McKinnon, Mr Schaeffer, I expect a revised profile on my desk, first thing in the morning.”

“I take it the poet isn’t the target?” Spike asked, receiving a shrug of an eyebrow from Angel and a glower from Ms McKinnon as his answer.

“And it was such a grand theory too, sod it all to hell.”

 

~*~

 

It had all been so easy.

 He was nothing if not thorough, and since he had the perfect poem picked out to place on her body, he returned to the Jericho townhouse to find a way to leave the message behind, in a conspicuous spot. Knowing she was in hospital, knowing they would dote on the old biddy until she bit the dust, he stood on the back porch, fingering the folded page from William’s book, trying to figure out the fine details.

Thunder cracked overhead and rain began to pelt down, just as the light in the front foyer clicked on. David stepped away from the door’s small windowpane, but kept an ear out for footsteps in the kitchen. When he was certain the intruder—probably William the lackey—was elsewhere, he pulled a leather case from his inside pocket and took out the file. He figured he’d have enough time to fiddle with the lock and prop the door open, and place the poem inside. William would certainly make sure the doors and windows were secured, and find the note on the antique sideboard, which, if David remembered correctly, stood to the left of the door.

The lock picked, David made to stand, but lost his balance and toppled tumbled into the kitchen at the same time heavy footsteps trod down the stairs. Needing to take advantage of his good fortune, David grabbed the closest object, in this case an empty long-necked vase on the sideboard, hid in the shadows of the pantry, and kicked the back door closed. As predicted, William came through to investigate the noise. With a hearty swing, David broke the vase over William’s head. He carried the unconscious William to the BMW, grateful that the storm kept any neighbours inside.

That had been hours ago, in the late hours of the evening. Humans being so fragile, William had come to then lasted only a few rounds before he passed out again. David quickly became bored with it, and left him in the front room overnight.

But as the sun began to rise, David’s frustration grew. He needed William awake and able to function during the day for the next step of his plan.

 

~*~

 

Nadya folded the newspaper and put it down next to her coffee cup. Alexis was staring into her porridge, willing it to eat itself. Morning conversation with her, it had been noted by both Spike and Wesley, had consisted of non-committal, monosyllabic grunts.

“She’ll be fine, honey.”

Alexis’s eyebrows raised a notch before she blinked and looked up. “Huh?”

“I said, ‘she’ll be fine.’ The ward sister told Wesley they were moving her later this morning.”

“Yeah. Spike told me.” She frowned while she debated telling her mother about Nikolai’s impending arrival. But if she did, they’d both get a lecture about shirking responsibilities and “that” sad look of disappointment. Better if she came home and he was already here. “Mama? Are you going to go visit her?”

“Yes, in a bit. Why?”

“William driving you?”

Nadya watched her daughter avert her eyes and toy with her breakfast. Something was making her fidget. There had been the call to Nikolai, but that should have calmed her down. Unless …

“No. I have a license, as you well know. Why do you ask?”

Alexis shrugged. “Worried.”

“I’ll be home long before sunset,” Nadya answered with a reassuring smile. “Look, sweetheart, why don’t you walk up to Budgens? We could use some milk, fruit, tea. Just take an umbrella and get back before I do.” She leaned forward conspiratorily. “And don’t tell Wesley I allowed you out of the house.”

 

~*~

 

“Why the hell isn’t anyone answering?” David yelled. “You know they left her alone. There’re funeral arrangements to make, so Mummy would do that.” He picked William up and slammed him up against the wall. Leaning into his face, David growled, “She’s screwing my plans up. I have a schedule, dammit!”

David picked up William’s mobile again and went through the contact list. With a smirk, he glimpsed down at William.

“Let’s see…third in the list, ‘Alexis’,” he mumbled as he dialled the number. “God, how she was looking at you while you read your drivel. She was fucking you in her mind.”

On the floor, William moved his tongue around the cuts inside his mouth and the teeth that had been loosened over the course of the night. The bleeding had long stopped and the swelling begun.

“Damn it!” David said and backhanded William’s face. “Bitch isn’t answering. We know she’s not home. Fuck it!”

Suddenly his countenance changed and he broke into a wide smile, as he turned to face William again.

“We’ll leave her a message and I’ll go pick her up. Why wait? I have the vamp mobile. The sun isn’t out with all this rain. Win, win.”

“She’ll recognise your voice,” William croaked through the pain.

David whipped a pistol out of his jacket pocket and pointed it at William. “That’s why you’re leaving the message.”

“Get fucking real.”

The safety snicked as David unlocked it. “You’ll pick her up in twenty minutes at the corner of Banbury. Make up the rest.” He pushed loudspeaker, shrugged and redialled her home phone number. “I’ll get her with or without your assistance, Knight Errant, but this way you’ll be around to make sure she arrives alive. Oh, and then your death will be speedy. Don’t and I’ll make sure you bleed to death, slowly and agonisingly on the carpet here, while Alexis has to listen to it.”

The answaphone clicked on. As William left his message, David played Russian roulette.

When William finished, David tossed him across the room. As he lay there, face down in the stained and mildewed carpet, David walked over and stepped on his back, breaking the vertebrae with a dry, sickening crack.


	4. Chapter 4

He drove up and down the stretch of Banbury between Summertown and Linton Road, searching for the small, dark girl. It was difficult in the pouring rain, but eventually he’d find her; the phone at home remained unanswered, so he knew she hadn’t sneaked past him.

Then he saw her, running across a street, two blocks down from hers. She had two grocery bags in one hand and tried to steady the umbrella with the other.

David made a U-turn, honking the horn as he slowed to a stop just ahead of her. He opened the door slightly and waited, looking out the driver’s window as she ran up to the car and tossed the bags in the back.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Alexis said as she struggled to simultaneously close the umbrella and back into the car. “It was such a bi—“

She turned to sit in the seat, only to find the barrel of a pistol in her face.

“Close the door, little gypsy mine,” David said. He fumbled just a little and slapped a pair of handcuffs onto her wrist. “We’re going to have a romping good ride, you and I.”

 

~*~

 

“Your boy drive Nadya today?”

“No, she took the car herself.”

Spike took his feet off the desk and leaned forward. “Wesley, this is making me itchy. I don’t like Alexis home alone.”

“What are you implying?”

“Look, just call Willie boy. Have him pop round and check on her, eh?”

“All right, if it’ll ease your itch,” Wesley said and ordered the computer to dial William’s mobile. The seconds stretched out while they waited. “Funny.”

“It’s off, innit?” Spike asked quietly, already certain of the answer.

Wesley punched a button on the phone. “Ms Gottfried, please page Angel in the Archives, I need him in my office immediately. And put an all-out for the BMW.”

“Call home, Wesley.”

“She’s—“

“The old me is one of his warped personalities and **I** ’d go after her,” Spike reasoned. “Call home, now.”

 

~*~

 

David grabbed a fistful of Alexis’s hair. God, how he loved the feel of the soft curls as he twisted them around his fist and jerked her to her feet. He’d have to remember to take a lock with him after he was done. He pushed the loose board to the side and pulled her through what used to be the back door.

“Come on, my little tramp,” he said over her muffled cries of pain. “Before we go upstairs, I want you to see your Prince Charming. He’s waiting for you in the sitting room. Right this way.”

David led he through the kitchen and into the dining room. She stumbled over the doorstep, falling to her knees on the rough carpet. David dragged her a short distance, then gave her time to stand up before continuing down the hall and into the room opposite the stairs.

“It was so kind of William to help me convince you to visit,” David said, yanking her over the threshold. He grabbed a torch lying on top of two crates, let go of her hair then tugged her around the form lying between the rotting sofa and the fireplace filled with cobwebs and dirt from a flue left open.

The click of the switch on the light echoed in the silence.

Alexis glanced down to notice William as his eyes fluttered open in the sudden light. David moved the light slightly. If the contorted position of his body wasn’t a blatant enough hint, the glassy eyed look and dilated pupils told her he was in excruciating pain, possibly on the verge of delirium. But once he made eye contact, she knew he recognized her.

“Look, Willie,” David cackled, his baritone voice rising to an alto, cracking maniacally. “I’ve brought our gypsy to see us. Too bad you won't get to share.” He fumbled in his leather jacket and pulled out the pistol, pointing the barrel straight into William’s face. Alexis shrieked behind her gag and jerked out of David’s grasp.

But not far enough. He grabbed her and tossed her in front of him, forcing her again to face William.

“Stay still, bitch,” David snarled. He propped his right arm on her shoulder and aimed the gun again. He leaned his chin on her shoulder then slid his left hand down her blouse and under her skirt’s waistband. Turning to kiss her neck, he released the safety.

She glanced down at William, as David’s hand snaked lower. William somehow read her thoughts of capitulation for his sake and shook his head.

Seconds before the deafening pop.

 

~*~

 

Nik paid the cab driver and ran out of the rain onto the front porch. He’d slipped away from the school after noon assembly, when teachers would be less likely to notice his absence. He hitchhiked to the train station then had to wait as two trains were cancelled due to inclement weather and the wrong leaves on the track. It had taken all his reserve to act calmly, as if nothing was amiss, but his ribcage rattled as his heart banged in fear, and waves of nausea washed over him anytime he was able to catch his breath.

When no one responded to his knock, he pulled his keys out of his pocket and went inside.

“Aly? Mama?” he called out, praying his mother was at the hospital. If she came down the stairs and found him in the foyer, he’d get the infamous “look of disappointment”, followed by a lecture on his responsibility to excel at his studies, to ensure that he served his people well. That in turn would be followed by a dramatic sigh and the threat, “Wesley will want to speak with you.”

“Aly?” he yelled at the top of his lungs. No message was left on the mirror in the entrance. “Goddamit! Answer me!” The response rebounded in terrifying silence.

Squelching more nauseating uncertainty, he jogged into the study and to Wesley’s desk. Two messages blinked on the phone. Pushing the play button, the first message yielded only a dial tone.

The second initially sent waves of relief over him, until he thought and replayed it. It was then he realized something was wrong with the voice, with the set-up, with the wording. He glanced at his watch: the time stamp said two-thirty and it was now four pm.

But before he could replay the message a third time, the front door opened and he heard three voices: only one of which he recognized. Frantic, he dashed into the en suite toilet, hoping anyone who needed to would go down the hall. He opened the medicine cabinet and positioned himself to see via the mirror without being seen.

“Where’s Alexis?” an American voice suggested, as a figure in a leather duster entered the room. Tall and with darkish hair, that one, Nik surmised, was Angel.

“Probably in her room,” a voice asked, the EastEnd accent still there but watered down with mild Americanisms. “She’s a clever one and wouldn’t venture out after sunset.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Wesley said, unconvincingly from the other side of the room where Nik couldn't see his face. “Unlike her to sleep at this time of day, however.”

“Oi, your Director-ship,” Spike yelled from behind the desk. “You got a message.”

“It’s probably Nadya. She won’t leave Agatha’s side since they resuscitated her.” Wesley made his way across the room, his fingers seeking contact with the smooth edge of the desk. “Well?”

Spike pushed the button; machine whirred and clicked, then, softly, “Alexis? It’s William. Your … stepfather wants me to take you to the … hospital to stay with your mother. … I’ll pick you up at the corner, on Banbury. … in twenty minutes.”

“The time stamp says two-thirty,” Angel said. “Broad daylight, if you call this weather daylight.”

“Something’s wrong. Play it back.”

Spike frowned. “Call the hospital. We know his phone’s off. Maybe that’s —”

“Play it back!” Wesley yelled and fumbled to get around the desk.

Angel grabbed his arm and righted him while Spike pressed the play button. Again, William’s distinctly Welsh accent whispered through with the rendezvous information.

“You didn’t call him?” Angel asked. “Ask him to take her to Nadya?”

“No. Play it back. Again!” Wesley said and snapped his fingers impatiently. “There’s a sound.”

“Yeah, the sound of nothing to worry about,” Spike agreed. “He’s taken your stepdaughter to see the old broad.”

Wesley turned to Spike, his blue eyes instinctively finding where the vampire stood in the room. “She’s not my stepdaughter. William knows we’re not married.” The machine clicked on again. “In the pauses. Turn it up to full volume.”

“Alexis? It’s William. Your <moan> stepfather wants me to take you to the <click> hospital to stay with your mother. <click> I’ll pick you—“ Wesley’s hand smashed the stop button.

“It’s a gun being cocked,” Angel confirmed. “He’s dead by now, Wesley.”

“I have to find her,” Wesley said, shaking off the image of David feeding off William.

“You mean **we** have to find her,” Spike corrected. “She’s his goal, and that loon’s gonna fly off when he finishes this.”

“He’s not going to leave,” Angel said. “She’s just bait.”

“Wrongo. She’s his gypsy,” Spike said, turning to Angel. “He’s already offed my Slayers, and I’ll bet he knows that Alexis knows the curse. He kills her but there’s no one around to ensoul him. He does you one up, mate.”

“She knows the curse?” Angel asked.

Spike nodded as Wesley ran around the desk and headed toward the closet. Again, Angel grabbed his arm, stopping him from tumbling headlong into the door in his haste.

“Tell us where to start looking,” Angel said. “We’ll find him and —“

“We?” Wesley jerked his arm from Angel’s grasp. He unlocked the closet and ran his fingers along the weapons lined up in a rack. “She may not be my responsibility legally, but she’s my family. I’ll not let him have her.”

“This isn’t your fault,” Angel reminded him, snatching the crossbow from his hand. “He’s baiting you and you’re walking straight into the trap.”

“I’d remind you what it’s like to have a child taken from you by someone you know. And to think that child is dead—“

“Oranges and apples in my book,” Spike said. He walked up behind them and chose a second crossbow. “Actually, Angel, I’m with Wes on this. It’s his family. Let him end it.” He looked inside the closet and grabbed a handgun. “Where we headed?”

“Lake Street, on the other side of Oxford,” Wesley answered. He bent down in front of a wooden chest and flipped the top open. Lifting then opening a smaller wooden box inside, he grabbed a few vials and put some in his jacket pocket. “The O’Leary family had a house there, until David’s mother ran off. It’s being demolished to make way for a block of luxury flats.”

Wesley stood and felt along the back wall until he found what he wanted: a rifle modified to shoot vials of holy water or liquefied silver. Depending on the demon. He loaded two vials into the chamber.

Angel peered into the closet. “Still have that retractable sword?”

Nik waited until he heard the front door slam. He grabbed one of the smaller crossbows from the closet, one Wesley had had developed before his return to England. He also pulled a black leather jacket from its hanger and felt around in the pockets. Before he left the study, he fished through the top drawer of the desk.

Inside the two-car garage, Nik took a quick glance around for the grappling hook and rope located above an off-white tarpaulin. He snatched the rope from its peg on the wall and threw it over his shoulder; after the crossbow was strapped to his arm, he put the jacket on and zipped it up.

He then tossed the tarp aside and revealed Wesley’s Thruxton, the classic motorcycle he’d lovingly rebuilt and restored before the accident. Wesley had often, to Nadya’s dismay, taken Nik around the Cotswolds on the back of the motorcycle. Until, of course, the accident, when the Triumph had been put aside, abandoned but not forgotten.

Nik put Wesley’s helmet on and rolled the bike out.

 

~*~

 

Alexis lay still on the bed, bidding her eyes not to well up with tears. Everything hurt, the gag was soaked with saliva and blood where it had cut the corners of her mouth, but damned as she was, she would deny him the fear he wanted to see in her face.

She thought about William’s beautiful face, smiling when she’d congratulated him last Friday at the dinner, but it turned into the frown he’d given her when he saw her with Spike. Then it morphed again into the corpse lying downstairs, his face blown away, a gaping, bloody hole where his smiling brown eyes had once been.

Alexis shook her head as her thoughts began to melt into hysteria; she needed to focus and get herself to safety. In the time David had left her alone, bruised and beaten, her hands cuffed behind her back, she’d gotten used to the eerie, damp darkness with the outlines of furniture adding indistinct textures to her vision. She wiggled until she brought her hands over her legs and in front of her. Even more determined, she swung her legs off the bed, sitting up on the sticky, dirty sheets. Her feet trembled uncontrollably when she touched the ground. A deep cleansing breath followed by another and she stood, the burning and throbbing pain between her legs made her knees wobble to the point she thought she’d stumble. She drew two more deep breaths and prepared herself to teeter down the stairs. Focussed on what she would do once she got outside, hoping beyond hope that it was now daylight, she stepped into the hallway.

David appeared from the doorway to the left. “Looking for me, princess? I went out and had a snack so we could play some more.” He tsked as he pushed her back to the bed, pulled a key from his pants’ pocket, unlocked one cuff and chained her to the iron bedrail. One hand around her neck pinning her to the bed, the other unzipping his fly, he forced her legs apart again. Small fearful whimpers, probably not audible to human ears he noted with begrudging respect, egged him on. “And here, I learned from TV and books that all gypsies were sluts, but you weren’t, were you? But you’re mine, all mine. Until your death do us part.”

 

~*~

 

 “Right again on Abington Road,” Wesley instructed. “Lake’s off to the right.”

“Bloody hell!” Spike muttered and swerved to avoid a motorcycle as it sped to overtake them. “Daft kids. That’s no way to treat a classic bike.”

“Black Triumph?” Wesley asked, fingering the vials in his pocket, trying to gain assurance from the small, cold projectiles. “Late 60s, early 70s model?”

“Looked like it,” Spike said, turning right onto the A4144. “How far down?”

“Not far. David’s house is, rather was number thirteen.”

“Why’d you ask about the motorcycle?” Angel asked.

“Nikolai.” Wesley answered. “I told Alexis to call him. I was certain he’d come up to comfort her since she was so upset. I received a phone call at noon telling me he was truant. He must have been in the house.”

“That manipulation is going to come back and bite you in the arse. But for now, if the sibling adoration is mutual, he’s a liability,” Spike said as he turned right onto Lake Street.

“Absolutely not. Park a house before.” Wesley unconsciously rubbed his eyes and sighed. “He’s a far better Watcher than I ever was.”

“Yeah, well. We’ll see 'cause we’re here.”

As he heard Angel unlock the car door handle, Wesley grabbed Spike’s shoulder. “But you’re spot on about his feelings, Spike.” His grip became painful. “Don’t allow him be the one to dust her.”

Spike took hold of Wesley’s hand. “I’ll take care of Alexis.” He turned and met Angel’s gaze. “I’ll find a way in through the back. Give me ten minutes head start, then storm the bloody hell out of that cesspool.”

~*~

 

Nikolai had parked the bike two houses down from the dilapidated mess that embodied both David’s life and afterlife. He darted beside number fifteen, just as he saw a set of headlights turning at the top of the road. When he entered the back yard, as it were, of number thirteen, he surveyed his opportunities. The building had only two floors; if David were laying in wait, Nik wouldn’t fall too far. He tried not to think of the broken, sharp cobblestones under his feet. Most of the windows were boarded up, but one double window on the first floor was not; curtains blew in and out of the shattered panes. As he assessed the situation, a soft thud and crack of sun-hardened roofing tiles sounded above his head and to the right; a shadowy figure had climbed onto the roof, ran along the roofline, and was now yanking boards from a small gable. Nikolai decided to give the vampire a small lead.

Spike crawled across the eaves, until he glimpsed through missing floorboards into a large, apparently empty room. Further across the attic led him to spy on a smaller, also barren, bedroom. There were no more gaps in the flooring as far as he could tell, but a telltale creaking of springs hinted at yet another room. He returned to what he assumed had been the master bedroom and surveyed the room again.

Convinced the room was indeed empty, Spike silently removed two floorboards where the ceiling below had crumbled and given way. He eased himself through the hole and into the room. Quickly and quietly, he slinked down the hallway toward the intermittent creaking. Just outside the doorway of that farthest room, he stopped and hissed an angry curse. Cowering in the corner, trying desperately to escape the cuff which bound her to the bed, contusing and wrenching her wrist in the process was Alexis, the outfit she had worn in the morning now tattered and stained. Spike raised his fingers to his lips, but Alexis shrank deeper into the corner, her eyes wide in fear and misunderstanding. As he took another step, crossing the threshold, she began to whimper and quiver. Confused, Spike’s brow furrowed into a deep V, just as the gun butt cracked against his skull and he was pushed into the room’s door with a resounding crash.

“Well, lookee what I hit,” David squealed in delight at the unconscious vampire. “The others can’t be too far behind. Let’s get you ready for their last look, shall we?” He raised a finger, “Hark!” as the front door burst open. ”Goddamn, I’m good.”

Angel kicked open the front door and stepped across the wreckage. A cursory glance toward the staircase, before he ventured down the short hall into the front room. What used to be William lay prone on the ground, his skull and brains splattered across the carpet and a filthy, once blue couch.

Angel returned to the front door, where Wesley now stood.

“William suffered much?”

“Don't believe so,” Angel lied.

Wesley’s eyebrow arched in disbelief. At the footsteps overhead, his head whipped around toward the stairs; the rifle at his side was brought up and pointed toward the sound.

“Oh, my God! You came! You finally came to visit!” David screeched and forced Alexis to stand upright. He smirked and lifted his arm, bound to Alexis and wrapped it around her, pulling her against his chest. “Bullets don’t work, not anymore, asshole. Even if they did, you’d hit the girl.”

“Angel?”

“She’s alive, bound and gagged,” Angel answered quietly. Watching David’s eyes as they flitted back and forth in anxious anticipation, he worked the release on the sword. Just then, a dark figure rose behind David then slinked back down.

“Why don’t you let her go, O’Leary?” Angel said, his voice louder than necessary, a rumbling growl reverberating when he spoke. “Looks like you’ve had more than a taste,” he heard Wesley’s despair, felt the tension increase, “and even if you kill her, she’s a liability to you now.”

The figure stayed hidden.

“She’s mine. I branded her, I decide what happens.” David squeezed Alexis closer, causing a moan of pain to escape. “Not you! Not him!” David pointed at Wesley. “Me! I have planned this for years! Every detail, every killing—“

“Well, bugger if they weren’t amateurish and sloppy,” they heard Spike croak and stumble down the hallway. He appeared, unsteady, at the beginning of the rail. “Bloody hell, even my first killings weren’t as shoddy as yours, and you say you planned? You started off pretty well, mate, faking your own death ‘nall, but then you made a huuuuge mistake. Prancing around Europe with the one demonic crackpot less stable than you. ”

The figure used the distraction of Spike’s insults to steal behind David, backing into the bathroom. Angel nudged Wesley and lifted the barrel of the rifle higher.

David cackled. “She said you were piss weak and jealous.” He watched Wesley brace the rifle butt against his shoulder. “Go ahead and shoot, but without your sight, you can’t guarantee you won’t hit my little lover here.”

“David,” Wesley said, pulling the hammer back. “Shut up.”

Angel caught Alexis’s attention and raised his eyebrows, shifting his gaze briefly to David's side. Her eyes widened just before Wesley shot twice in rapid succession. David blinked in disbelief then screamed in agony as the bullets burst on impact and the holy water burned his arm and face. Flailing, he released his grip on Alexis, causing her to collapse and dangle from the end of the handcuff.

David exploded into dust, Spike raced to catch Alexis before she could fall down the stairs, and Nikolai let go of the breath he had been holding. He dropped the stake and fell to his knees next to Alexis.

“Clear,” Angel said. Wesley tossed the rifle aside and started up the staircase.

After easing her against his side, Spike found the keys in the pile of dust and unlocked the cuffs. Nikolai untied the gag then took his sister into his arms and rocked her gently, cooing in Romani. Once Wesley reached the brother and sister, Spike stood and descended the stairs.

“Well,” he said, brushing dust off his coat, “that was a bitch.”

 

~*~

 

Angel walked into the study, unsure what to say now there was no “case” to concentrate on.

“Nikolai offered to take you to the airport whenever you’re ready,” Wesley volunteered.

Angel nodded perfunctorily then realized what he'd done and what had been said. “Nikolai? I thought he’d be back at the school.”

“Special dispensation from the Director. Plus, he's on cleanup detail."

“Right.” Angel took the seat across from the desk. “Look, Wesley, this isn’t how I had hoped things would end.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, us. I had hoped we’d stay friends after, after what happened."

“Ah, well. I had issues to resolve, as did you. Plus, lives such as ours are fraught with interrupt—"

The door to the garage burst open with a whiff of axle grease and car wax. Nikolai strode wearily into the room and made to throw a rag onto the desk. He thought better of it, and with a side glance at Angel, sat down on the edge of a chair, twisting the rag in his hands.

“Done,” he announced and sat back.

“Fine, for now,” Wesley acknowledged. “Your mother would like to see you. She’s in the sitting room.” The corners of his mouth lifted briefly at the groan. “I doubt you’ll be spared a lecture, after all it **is** your turn. I need a rest.”

“No problem, until she gets to the crying,” Nik slowly and skilfully lifted his feet onto the corner of the desk. The heels of his Docs landed noiselessly on the corner.

“She’s entitled to cry. Been a long, hard slog. And remove your feet from my desk.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay." Nik looked past Angel to the doorway. "Spike still sitting upstairs with Aly? Does he always read that poetry shite?”

"Whenever he has an audience," Angel said, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.

"Whatever," Nikolai snorted. He looked between the two and rose. "Right. Best to face the music and resolve any outstanding issues now, eh? You two look like you need some alone time to do the same."

 

_FIN_


End file.
